DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK--AN INCIDENT

When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they
were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were
reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them,
extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch
of the rising sun.

His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young
man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character.  On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to
postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the
whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space
of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of
the parish and the drunken section,--that is, he went to church, but
yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene
creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to
be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood
in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in
tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased,
he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose
moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.

Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's
appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mental
picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always
dressed in that way.  He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at
the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds,
and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased
in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording
to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might
stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their maker
being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any
weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.

Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a
small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and
intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being
several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of
going either too fast or not at all.  The smaller of its hands, too,
occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes
were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour
they belonged to.  The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied
by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the
other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of
the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his
neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the
green-faced timekeepers within.  It may be mentioned that Oak's fob
being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation
in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height
under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by
throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a
mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and
drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one
of his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedingly
mild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these.
In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of
youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter
crannies some relics of the boy.  His height and breadth would
have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been
exhibited with due consideration.  But there is a way some men have,
rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than
flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their
manner of showing them.  And from a quiet modesty that would have
become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he
had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and
with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the
shoulders.  This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he
depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his
capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.

He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to
be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one.  He was at the brightest
period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were
clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence
of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse,
and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united
again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and
family.  In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.

The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe
Hill.  Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster
and Chalk-Newton.  Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming
down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted
yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking
alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly.  The waggon was laden with
household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat
a woman, young and attractive.  Gabriel had not beheld the sight for
more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill
just beneath his eyes.

"The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss," said the waggoner.

"Then I heard it fall," said the girl, in a soft, though not
particularly low voice.  "I heard a noise I could not account for
when we were coming up the hill."

"I'll run back."

"Do," she answered.

The sensible horses stood--perfectly still, and the waggoner's steps
sank fainter and fainter in the distance.

The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by
tables and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle,
and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,
together with a caged canary--all probably from the windows of the
house just vacated.  There was also a cat in a willow basket, from
the partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and
affectionately surveyed the small birds around.

The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the
only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up
and down the perches of its prison.  Then she looked attentively
downwards.  It was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an
oblong package tied in paper, and lying between them.  She turned her
head to learn if the waggoner were coming.  He was not yet in sight;
and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run
upon what was inside it.  At length she drew the article into her
lap, and untied the paper covering; a small swing looking-glass was
disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively.  She
parted her lips and smiled.

It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the
crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright
face and dark hair.  The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed
around her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they
invested the whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl
with a peculiar vernal charm.  What possessed her to indulge in
such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and
unperceived farmer who were alone its spectators,--whether the smile
began as a factitious one, to test her capacity in that art,--nobody
knows; it ended certainly in a real smile.  She blushed at herself,
and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more.

The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an
act--from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out
of doors--lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically
possess.  The picture was a delicate one.  Woman's prescriptive
infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the
freshness of an originality.  A cynical inference was irresistible by
Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would
have been.  There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the
glass.  She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a
dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention
had been her motive in taking up the glass.  She simply observed
herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, her
thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which
men would play a part--vistas of probable triumphs--the smiles being
of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.
Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was
so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any
part in them at all.

The waggoner's steps were heard returning.  She put the glass in the
paper, and the whole again into its place.

When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of
espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the
turnpike-gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the
object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll.
About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he
heard a dispute.  It was a difference concerning twopence between the
persons with the waggon and the man at the toll-bar.

"Mis'ess's niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that's
enough that I've offered ye, you great miser, and she won't pay any
more."  These were the waggoner's words.

"Very well; then mis'ess's niece can't pass," said the turnpike-keeper,
closing the gate.

Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into
a reverie.  There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably
insignificant.  Threepence had a definite value as money--it was an
appreciable infringement on a day's wages, and, as such, a higgling
matter; but twopence--"Here," he said, stepping forward and handing
twopence to the gatekeeper; "let the young woman pass."  He looked up
at her then; she heard his words, and looked down.

Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the
middle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas
Iscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that
not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of
distinction or notoriety.  The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden
seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told
her man to drive on.  She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on
a minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt
none, for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we
know how women take a favour of that kind.

The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle.  "That's a
handsome maid," he said to Oak.

"But she has her faults," said Gabriel.

"True, farmer."

"And the greatest of them is--well, what it is always."

"Beating people down? ay, 'tis so."

"O no."

"What, then?"

Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller's
indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance
over the hedge, and said, "Vanity."

NIGHT--THE FLOCK--AN INTERIOR--ANOTHER INTERIOR

It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day
in the year.  A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill
whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the
sunshine of a few days earlier.

Norcombe Hill--not far from lonely Toller-Down--was one of the spots
which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape
approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on
earth.  It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil--an ordinary
specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which
may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion, when far
grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down.

The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying
plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the
crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane.
To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest
blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound
as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened
moan.  The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same
breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and
sending them spinning across the grass.  A group or two of the latest
in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very
mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled
against the trunks with smart taps.

Between this half-wooded half-naked hill, and the vague still horizon
that its summit indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of
fathomless shade--the sounds from which suggested that what it
concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here.  The thin
grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in
breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures--one
rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another
brushing them like a soft broom.  The instinctive act of humankind
was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the
trees on the left wailed or chaunted to each other in the regular
antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to
leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and
how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south, to be heard no
more.

The sky was clear--remarkably clear--and the twinkling of all the
stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
The North Star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the
Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at
a right angle with the meridian.  A difference of colour in the
stars--oftener read of than seen in England--was really perceptible
here.  The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a
steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and
Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as
this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.
The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past
earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness,
or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the
wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression
of riding along is vivid and abiding.  The poetry of motion is a
phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification
it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night,
and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass
of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all
such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately
progress through the stars.  After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is
hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of
such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.

Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this
place up against the sky.  They had a clearness which was to be found
nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in
nature.  They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.

The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed
muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to
spread high or wide.  It came from the direction of a small dark
object under the plantation hedge--a shepherd's hut--now presenting
an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled
to attach either meaning or use.

The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small
Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of
the Ark which are followed by toy-makers--and by these means are
established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because
earliest impressions--to pass as an approximate pattern.  The hut
stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the
ground.  Such shepherds' huts are dragged into the fields when the
lambing season comes on, to shelter the shepherd in his enforced
nightly attendance.

It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel "Farmer"
Oak.  During the twelvemonth preceding this time he had been enabled
by sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease
the small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock
it with two hundred sheep.  Previously he had been a bailiff for a
short time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his
childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large
proprietors, till old Gabriel sank to rest.

This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master
and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a
critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position
clearly.  The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of
his ewes, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he
wisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this
season to a hireling or a novice.

The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the
flute-playing ceased.  A rectangular space of light appeared in the
side of the hut, and in the opening the outline of Farmer Oak's
figure.  He carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door
behind him, came forward and busied himself about this nook of the
field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and
disappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him
as he stood before or behind it.

Oak's motions, though they had a quiet-energy, were slow, and their
deliberateness accorded well with his occupation.  Fitness being the
basis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and
turns in and about the flock had elements of grace.  Yet, although if
occasion demanded he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a
dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born, his
special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing
little or nothing to momentum as a rule.

A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the wan
starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been
casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for
his great purpose this winter.  Detached hurdles thatched with straw
were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and
under which the whitish forms of his meek ewes moved and rustled.
The ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence,
recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing
to an increasing growth of surrounding wool.  This continued till Oak
withdrew again from the flock.  He returned to the hut, bringing in
his arms a new-born lamb, consisting of four legs large enough for
a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane
about half the substance of the legs collectively, which constituted
the animal's entire body just at present.

The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small
stove, where a can of milk was simmering.  Oak extinguished the
lantern by blowing into it and then pinching the snuff, the cot being
lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire.  A rather hard
couch, formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered
half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man
stretched himself along, loosened his woollen cravat, and closed his
eyes.  In about the time a person unaccustomed to bodily labour would
have decided upon which side to lie, Farmer Oak was asleep.

The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and
alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle,
reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung
associations of enjoyment even over utensils and tools.  In the
corner stood the sheep-crook, and along a shelf at one side were
ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to
ovine surgery and physic; spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesia,
ginger, and castor-oil being the chief.  On a triangular shelf across
the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup for ale or cider,
which was supplied from a flagon beneath.  Beside the provisions lay
the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely
watcher to beguile a tedious hour.  The house was ventilated by two
round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood slides.

The lamb, revived by the warmth began to bleat, and the sound entered
Gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected
sounds will.  Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert
wakefulness with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse
operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour-hand had
shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried
it into the darkness.  After placing the little creature with its
mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the
time of night from the altitudes of the stars.

The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were
half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which
gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it
soared forth above the rim of the landscape.  Castor and Pollux with
their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy
Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away
through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the
leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the
uppermost boughs.

"One o'clock," said Gabriel.

Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some
charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky
as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit,
as a work of art superlatively beautiful.  For a moment he seemed
impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with
the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and
sounds of man.  Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys
were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded
hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself; he could
fancy them all gone round to the sunny side.

Occupied thus, with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived
that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the
outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing.  It was an
artificial light, almost close at hand.

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable
and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by
far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when
intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability,
induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united
to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.

Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower
boughs to the windy side.  A dim mass under the slope reminded him
that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the
slope of the hill, so that at its back part the roof was almost level
with the ground.  In front it was formed of board nailed to posts and
covered with tar as a preservative.  Through crevices in the roof and
side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made
the radiance that had attracted him.  Oak stepped up behind, where,
leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole, he
could see into the interior clearly.

The place contained two women and two cows.  By the side of the
latter a steaming bran-mash stood in a bucket.  One of the women was
past middle age.  Her companion was apparently young and graceful;
he could form no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being
almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's-eye view, as
Milton's Satan first saw Paradise.  She wore no bonnet or hat, but
had enveloped herself in a large cloak, which was carelessly flung
over her head as a covering.

"There, now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her
knuckles upon her hips, and looking at their goings-on as a whole.
"I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now.  I have never been more
frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she
recovers."

The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall
together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without
parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught
the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy.

"I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things," she
said.

"As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other; "for you
must help me if you stay."

"Well, my hat is gone, however," continued the younger. "It went over
the hedge, I think.  The idea of such a slight wind catching it."

The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a
tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes
to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her
long back being mathematically level.  The other was spotted, grey
and white.  Beside her Oak now noticed a little calf about a day old,
looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not
long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning
to the lantern, which it apparently mistook for the moon, inherited
instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience.
Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcombe Hill
lately.

"I think we had better send for some oatmeal," said the elder woman;
"there's no more bran."

"Yes, aunt; and I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light."

"But there's no side-saddle."

"I can ride on the other: trust me."

Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her
features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of
the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon
his fancy for their details.  In making even horizontal and clear
inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us
whatever our eyes bring in.  Had Gabriel been able from the first to
get a distinct view of her countenance, his estimate of it as very
handsome or slightly so would have been as his soul required a
divinity at the moment or was ready supplied with one.  Having for
some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing
void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for
his fancy, he painted her a beauty.

By one of those whimsical coincidences in which Nature, like a busy
mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn
and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and
forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket.  Oak knew
her instantly as the heroine of the yellow waggon, myrtles, and
looking-glass: prosily, as the woman who owed him twopence.

They placed the calf beside its mother again, took up the lantern,
and went out, the light sinking down the hill till it was no more
than a nebula.  Gabriel Oak returned to his flock.

A GIRL ON HORSEBACK--CONVERSATION

The sluggish day began to break.  Even its position terrestrially is
one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason
save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again
into the plantation.  Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of
a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an
auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading
past the cattle-shed.  She was the young woman of the night before.
Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having
lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it.  He hastily
scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found
the hat among the leaves.  Gabriel took it in his hand and returned
to his hut.  Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the
loophole in the direction of the rider's approach.

She came up and looked around--then on the other side of the hedge.
Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when
an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for
the present.  The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the
plantation.  It was not a bridle-path--merely a pedestrian's track,
and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven
feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath
them.  The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a
moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view,
then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her
head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to
the sky.  The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of
a kingfisher--its noiselessness that of a hawk.  Gabriel's eyes had
scarcely been able to follow her.  The tall lank pony seemed used to
such doings, and ambled along unconcerned.  Thus she passed under the
level boughs.

The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head
and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having
ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt
another, even more obviously convenient than the first.  She had
no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the
smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways.  Springing to
her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying
herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner
demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and
trotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill.

Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat
in his hut, went again among his ewes.  An hour passed, the girl
returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of
her.  On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a
milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off.
The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman.

Soon soft spirts alternating with loud spirts came in regular
succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person
milking a cow.  Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited
beside the path she would follow in leaving the hill.

She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left
arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make
Oak wish that the event had happened in the summer, when the whole
would have been revealed.  There was a bright air and manner about
her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her
existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption
failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the
whole, true.  Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius,
that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to
recognised power.  It was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's
face rising like the moon behind the hedge.

The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the
portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution
than a difference.  The starting-point selected by the judgment was
her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one, and the
hedge diminutive; hence, making allowance for error by comparison
with these, she could have been not above the height to be chosen by
women as best.  All features of consequence were severe and regular.
It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with
eyes for beauty, that in Englishwoman a classically-formed face is
seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the
highly-finished features being generally too large for the remainder
of the frame; that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads
usually goes off into random facial curves.  Without throwing a
Nymphean tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism
checked itself as out of place, and looked at her proportions with a
long consciousness of pleasure.  From the contours of her figure in
its upper part, she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders; but
since her infancy nobody had ever seen them.  Had she been put into
a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush.  Yet
she was not a shy girl by any means; it was merely her instinct to
draw the line dividing the seen from the unseen higher than they do
it in towns.

That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as
she caught Oak's eyes conning the same page was natural, and almost
certain.  The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if
a little more pronounced, dignity if a little less.  Rays of male
vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural
districts; she brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been
irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her
previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase
of itself.  Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all.

"I found a hat," said Oak.

"It is mine," said she, and, from a sense of proportion, kept down to
a small smile an inclination to laugh distinctly: "it flew away last
night."

"One o'clock this morning?"

"Well--it was."  She was surprised.  "How did you know?" she said.

"I was here."

"You are Farmer Oak, are you not?"

"That or thereabouts.  I'm lately come to this place."

"A large farm?" she inquired, casting her eyes round, and swinging
back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass; but
it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent
curves with a colour of their own.

"No; not large.  About a hundred."  (In speaking of farms the word
"acres" is omitted by the natives, by analogy to such old expressions
as "a stag of ten.")

"I wanted my hat this morning," she went on.  "I had to ride to
Tewnell Mill."

"Yes you had."

"How do you know?"

"I saw you."

"Where?" she inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her
lineaments and frame to a standstill.

"Here--going through the plantation, and all down the hill," said
Farmer Oak, with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some
matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction
named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes.

A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as
suddenly as if he had been caught in a theft.  Recollection of the
strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was
succeeded in the girl by a nettled palpitation, and that by a hot
face.  It was a time to see a woman redden who was not given to
reddening as a rule; not a point in the milkmaid but was of the
deepest rose-colour.  From the Maiden's Blush, through all varieties
of the Provence down to the Crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's
acquaintance quickly graduated; whereupon he, in considerateness,
turned away his head.

The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she
would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again.
He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the
breeze, and looked.  She had gone away.

With an air between that of Tragedy and Comedy Gabriel returned to
his work.

Five mornings and evenings passed.  The young woman came regularly to
milk the healthy cow or to attend to the sick one, but never allowed
her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person.  His want of
tact had deeply offended her--not by seeing what he could not help,
but by letting her know that he had seen it.  For, as without law
there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum; and she appeared
to feel that Gabriel's espial had made her an indecorous woman
without her own connivance.  It was food for great regret with him;
it was also a _contretemps_ which touched into life a latent heat he
had experienced in that direction.

The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting,
but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week.  One
afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening,
which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds.  It was a time
when in cottages the breath of the sleepers freezes to the sheets;
when round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion the
sitters' backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow.  Many
a small bird went to bed supperless that night among the bare boughs.

As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the
cowshed.  At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of
bedding round the yearling ewes he entered the hut and heaped more
fuel upon the stove.  The wind came in at the bottom of the door,
and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there and wheeled the cot round a
little more to the south.  Then the wind spouted in at a ventilating
hole--of which there was one on each side of the hut.

Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door
closed one of these must be kept open--that chosen being always on
the side away from the wind.  Closing the slide to windward, he
turned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered
that he would first sit down leaving both closed for a minute or two,
till the temperature of the hut was a little raised.  He sat down.

His head began to ache in an unwonted manner, and, fancying himself
weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak
decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall
asleep.  He fell asleep, however, without having performed the
necessary preliminary.

How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew.  During the
first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be
in course of enactment.  His dog was howling, his head was aching
fearfully--somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his
neckerchief.

On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in
a strange manner of unexpectedness.  The young girl with the
remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him.  More than
this--astonishingly more--his head was upon her lap, his face and
neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his
collar.

"Whatever is the matter?" said Oak, vacantly.

She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to
start enjoyment.

"Nothing now," she answered, "since you are not dead. It is a wonder
you were not suffocated in this hut of yours."

"Ah, the hut!" murmured Gabriel.  "I gave ten pounds for that hut.
But I'll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old
times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw!  It played me nearly
the same trick the other day!"  Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought
down his fist upon the floor.

"It was not exactly the fault of the hut," she observed in a tone
which showed her to be that novelty among women--one who finished a
thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it.  "You
should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to
leave the slides closed."

"Yes I suppose I should," said Oak, absently.  He was endeavouring to
catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head
upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone
things.  He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon
have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey
the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language.
So he remained silent.

She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking
himself like a Samson.  "How can I thank 'ee?" he said at last,
gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his
face.

"Oh, never mind that," said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile
to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to
be.

"How did you find me?"

"I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when
I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost
over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the
next).  The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my
skirt.  I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing
to see if the slides were closed.  My uncle has a hut like this one,
and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without
leaving a slide open.  I opened the door, and there you were like
dead.  I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting
it was warm, and no use."

"I wonder if I should have died?" Gabriel said, in a low voice, which
was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her.

"Oh no!" the girl replied.  She seemed to prefer a less tragic
probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should
harmonise with the dignity of such a deed--and she shunned it.

"I believe you saved my life, Miss--I don't know your name.  I know
your aunt's, but not yours."

"I would just as soon not tell it--rather not.  There is no reason
either why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with
me."

"Still, I should like to know."

"You can inquire at my aunt's--she will tell you."

"My name is Gabriel Oak."

"And mine isn't.  You seem fond of yours in speaking it so
decisively, Gabriel Oak."

"You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the
most of it."

"I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable."

"I should think you might soon get a new one."

"Mercy!--how many opinions you keep about you concerning other
people, Gabriel Oak."

"Well, Miss--excuse the words--I thought you would like them.  But I
can't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue.  I
never was very clever in my inside.  But I thank you.  Come, give me
your hand."

She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old-fashioned earnest
conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on.  "Very well," she
said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure
impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too
demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers
with the lightness of a small-hearted person.

"I am sorry," he said the instant after.

"What for?"

"Letting your hand go so quick."

"You may have it again if you like; there it is."  She gave him her
hand again.

Oak held it longer this time--indeed, curiously long.  "How soft it
is--being winter time, too--not chapped or rough or anything!" he
said.

"There--that's long enough," said she, though without pulling it
away. "But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it?  You
may if you want to."

"I wasn't thinking of any such thing," said Gabriel, simply; "but I
will--"

"That you won't!" She snatched back her hand.

Gabriel felt himself guilty of another want of tact.

"Now find out my name," she said, teasingly; and withdrew.

GABRIEL'S RESOLVE--THE VISIT--THE MISTAKE

The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is,
as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which
recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities
of capture to the subordinated man.

This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon
the emotional constitution of young Farmer Oak.

Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant
profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of
pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially,
is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's
feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon
his chances.  His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in
which Oak waited for the girl's presence, that the farmer was quite
struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at
the dog.  However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her
regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened
without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself.  Oak
had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to
frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales--

         --Full of sound and fury
      --Signifying nothing--

he said no word at all.

By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba
Everdene, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days.  He
dreaded the eighth day.

At last the eighth day came.  The cow had ceased to give milk for
that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more.  Gabriel
had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated
a short time before.  He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private
enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair,
though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated
himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly
small.  Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.  Marriage
transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should
be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of
imbecility it supplants.  Oak began now to see light in this
direction, and said to himself, "I'll make her my wife, or upon my
soul I shall be good for nothing!"

All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he
might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt.

He found his opportunity in the death of a ewe, mother of a living
lamb.  On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution--a
fine January morning, when there was just enough blue sky visible
to make cheerfully-disposed people wish for more, and an occasional
gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday
basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the
aunt--George, the dog walking behind, with a countenance of great
concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking.

Gabriel had watched the blue wood-smoke curling from the chimney with
strange meditation.  At evening he had fancifully traced it down the
chimney to the spot of its origin--seen the hearth and Bathsheba
beside it--beside it in her out-door dress; for the clothes she had
worn on the hill were by association equally with her person included
in the compass of his affection; they seemed at this early time of
his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba
Everdene.

He had made a toilet of a nicely-adjusted kind--of a nature between
the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate--of a degree between
fine-market-day and wet-Sunday selection.  He thoroughly cleaned his
silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots,
looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the
plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his
way back; took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box,
put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with sprigs of an
elegant flower uniting the beauties of both rose and lily without the
defects of either, and used all the hair-oil he possessed upon his
usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened
it to a splendidly novel colour, between that of guano and Roman
cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet
seaweed round a boulder after the ebb.

Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage save the chatter of a
knot of sparrows on the eaves; one might fancy scandal and rumour to
be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of
those under them.  It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one,
for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just
as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into
various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his
dog George.  The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at
which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of
breath--in fact, he never barked even at the sheep except to order,
when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of
Commination-service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through
once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good.

A voice came from behind some laurel-bushes into which the cat had
run:

"Poor dear!  Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it;--did he,
poor dear!"

"I beg your pardon," said Oak to the voice, "but George was walking
on behind me with a temper as mild as milk."

Almost before he had ceased speaking, Oak was seized with a misgiving
as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. Nobody appeared, and
he heard the person retreat among the bushes.

Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into
his forehead by sheer force of reverie.  Where the issue of an
interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for
the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping
sensations of failure.  Oak went up to the door a little abashed:
his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of
opening.

Bathsheba's aunt was indoors.  "Will you tell Miss Everdene that
somebody would be glad to speak to her?" said Mr. Oak.  (Calling
one's self merely Somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken
as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world: it springs
from a refined modesty, of which townspeople, with their cards and
announcements, have no notion whatever.)

Bathsheba was out.  The voice had evidently been hers.

"Will you come in, Mr. Oak?"

"Oh, thank 'ee," said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace.  "I've
brought a lamb for Miss Everdene.  I thought she might like one to
rear; girls do."

"She might," said Mrs. Hurst, musingly; "though she's only a visitor
here.  If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in."

"Yes, I will wait," said Gabriel, sitting down.  "The lamb isn't
really the business I came about, Mrs. Hurst.  In short, I was going
to ask her if she'd like to be married."

"And were you indeed?"

"Yes.  Because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her.
D'ye know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all?"

"Let me think," said Mrs. Hurst, poking the fire superfluously....
"Yes--bless you, ever so many young men.  You see, Farmer Oak, she's
so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides--she was going to
be a governess once, you know, only she was too wild.  Not that her
young men ever come here--but, Lord, in the nature of women, she must
have a dozen!"

"That's unfortunate," said Farmer Oak, contemplating a crack in the
stone floor with sorrow.  "I'm only an every-day sort of man, and my
only chance was in being the first comer ... Well, there's no use in
my waiting, for that was all I came about: so I'll take myself off
home-along, Mrs. Hurst."

When Gabriel had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he
heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more
treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies
itself when shouted across a field.  He looked round, and saw a girl
racing after him, waving a white handkerchief.

Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer.  It was Bathsheba
Everdene.  Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as
it appeared, from emotion, but from running.

"Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in
front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side.

"I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her further
speech.

"Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red and
moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off
the dew.  "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should
have come in from the garden instantly.  I ran after you to say--that
my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--"

Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear,"
he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit till
you've found your breath."

"--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man
already," Bathsheba went on.  "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I
never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was
SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several."

"Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling
one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness.  He held
out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by
pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her
loud-beating heart.  Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so
that it slipped through his fingers like an eel.

"I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree
less assurance than when he had seized her hand.

"Yes; you have."

"A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon
be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have
got on a little since I was a boy."  Gabriel uttered "a little" in a
tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal."
He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice
as hard as I do now."

He went forward and stretched out his arm again.  Bathsheba had
overtaken him at a point beside which stood a low stunted holly bush,
now laden with red berries.  Seeing his advance take the form of an
attitude threatening a possible enclosure, if not compression, of her
person, she edged off round the bush.

"Why, Farmer Oak," she said, over the top, looking at him with
rounded eyes, "I never said I was going to marry you."

"Well--that IS a tale!" said Oak, with dismay. "To run after anybody
like this, and then say you don't want him!"

"What I meant to tell you was only this," she said eagerly, and yet
half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for
herself--"that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart, instead of my
having a dozen, as my aunt said; I HATE to be thought men's property
in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day.  Why, if I'd
wanted you I shouldn't have run after you like this; 'twould have
been the FORWARDEST thing!  But there was no harm in hurrying to
correct a piece of false news that had been told you."

"Oh, no--no harm at all."  But there is such a thing as being too
generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and Oak added with a
more appreciative sense of all the circumstances--"Well, I am not
quite certain it was no harm."

"Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to
marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill."

"Come," said Gabriel, freshening again; "think a minute or two.  I'll
wait a while, Miss Everdene.  Will you marry me?  Do, Bathsheba.  I
love you far more than common!"

"I'll try to think," she observed, rather more timorously; "if I can
think out of doors; my mind spreads away so."

"But you can give a guess."

"Then give me time."  Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the
distance, away from the direction in which Gabriel stood.

"I can make you happy," said he to the back of her head, across the
bush.  "You shall have a piano in a year or two--farmers' wives are
getting to have pianos now--and I'll practise up the flute right well
to play with you in the evenings."

"Yes; I should like that."

"And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market--and nice
flowers, and birds--cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful,"
continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality.

"I should like it very much."

"And a frame for cucumbers--like a gentleman and lady."

"Yes."

"And when the wedding was over, we'd have it put in the newspaper
list of marriages."

"Dearly I should like that!"

"And the babies in the births--every man jack of 'em!  And at home by
the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be--and whenever I look
up there will be you."

"Wait, wait, and don't be improper!"

Her countenance fell, and she was silent awhile.  He regarded the red
berries between them over and over again, to such an extent, that
holly seemed in his after life to be a cypher signifying a proposal
of marriage.  Bathsheba decisively turned to him.

"No; 'tis no use," she said.  "I don't want to marry you."

"Try."

"I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking; for a marriage
would be very nice in one sense.  People would talk about me, and
think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all
that, But a husband--"

"Well!"

"Why, he'd always be there, as you say; whenever I looked up, there
he'd be."

"Of course he would--I, that is."

"Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a
wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.  But since a
woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry--at least
yet."

"That's a terrible wooden story!"

At this criticism of her statement Bathsheba made an addition to her
dignity by a slight sweep away from him.

"Upon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider
than that," said Oak.  "But dearest," he continued in a palliative
voice, "don't be like it!" Oak sighed a deep honest sigh--none the
less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was
rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere.  "Why won't you
have me?" he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side.

"I cannot," she said, retreating.

"But why?" he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever
reaching her, and facing over the bush.

"Because I don't love you."

"Yes, but--"

She contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was
hardly ill-mannered at all.  "I don't love you," she said.

"But I love you--and, as for myself, I am content to be liked."

"Oh Mr. Oak--that's very fine!  You'd get to despise me."

"Never," said Mr Oak, so earnestly that he seemed to be coming, by
the force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms.
"I shall do one thing in this life--one thing certain--that is, love
you, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die."  His voice
had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly
trembled.

"It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much!"
she said with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around
for some means of escape from her moral dilemma.  "How I wish I
hadn't run after you!"  However she seemed to have a short cut for
getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archness.
"It wouldn't do, Mr Oak.  I want somebody to tame me; I am too
independent; and you would never be able to, I know."

Oak cast his eyes down the field in a way implying that it was
useless to attempt argument.

"Mr. Oak," she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense,
"you are better off than I.  I have hardly a penny in the world--I am
staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance.  I am better educated
than you--and I don't love you a bit: that's my side of the case.
Now yours: you are a farmer just beginning; and you ought in common
prudence, if you marry at all (which you should certainly not think
of doing at present), to marry a woman with money, who would stock a
larger farm for you than you have now."

Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise and much admiration.

"That's the very thing I had been thinking myself!" he naively said.

Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to
succeed with Bathsheba: his humility, and a superfluous moiety of
honesty.  Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted.

"Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?" she said, almost
angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek.

"I can't do what I think would be--would be--"

"Right?"

"No: wise."

"You have made an admission NOW, Mr. Oak," she exclaimed, with even
more hauteur, and rocking her head disdainfully.  "After that, do you
think I could marry you?  Not if I know it."

He broke in passionately.  "But don't mistake me like that!  Because
I am open enough to own what every man in my shoes would have thought
of, you make your colours come up your face, and get crabbed with me.
That about your not being good enough for me is nonsense.  You speak
like a lady--all the parish notice it, and your uncle at Weatherbury
is, I have heerd, a large farmer--much larger than ever I shall be.
May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me o' Sundays?
I don't want you to make-up your mind at once, if you'd rather not."

"No--no--I cannot.  Don't press me any more--don't.  I don't love
you--so 'twould be ridiculous," she said, with a laugh.

No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of
skittishness.  "Very well," said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one
who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.
"Then I'll ask you no more."

The novel opens on a December afternoon with the introduction of a character named Gabriel Oak. Gabriel is an unassuming man in his late twenties who has risen from humble beginnings as a shepherd to work as a bailiff and now leases his own farm near the town of Norcombe, where he tends a flock of sheep. While Gabriel is out walking, he observes an attractive young woman riding on a wagon full of household items. He catches up to the wagon when the driver and the woman engage in a dispute about the rate they have to pay at a turnpike, and settles the dispute by paying the fare himself. That night, while staying in his hut and tending to his sheep, Gabriel sees an unexpected light and goes to investigate. Inside a nearby shed, he finds two women tending to a sick cow. Observing them, he realizes that the younger one is the same woman he encountered on the wagon. The next morning, he returns to the shed just as the young woman also returns, and brings her the hat she had lost in the windy night. Unfortunately, Gabriel also embarrasses the young woman by making it clear that he has seen her behaving playfully when she thought she was alone, and she reacts with scorn. A few days later, Gabriel finds himself in a dangerous situation when he falls asleep in his hut without opening the ventilation holes, risking suffocation. He awakens from unconsciousness to find the young woman. Having come to tend to her cow, she noticed something was wrong, and dragged him out of the hut. The young woman, who he later learns is named Bathsheba Everdene, behaves somewhat flirtatiously, and Gabriel becomes enamored with her. As the days pass, Gabriel becomes increasingly infatuated and decides to propose to Bathsheba. He goes to visit her at the home of her aunt, Mrs. Hurst, bringing with him a baby lamb as a gift. He shares his intention with Mrs. Hurst, who tells him that Bathsheba has many suitors. Gabriel is discouraged and decides to leave but Bathsheba comes chasing after him. He suggests they get married, indicating that he has bright financial prospects and would take good care of her, but Bathsheba explains that she can't marry him since she doesn't love him. Gabriel initially vows that he will love her forever, but when Bathsheba suggests it would be wise for him to marry a woman with money, he seems to agree with the idea. This annoys her, and the two part on awkward terms.

The novel's opening chapters quickly establish both the attraction and tensions between Bathsheba and Gabriel. The characters have occupied opposite class trajectories, since Gabriel has risen from a humble background to now leasing a farm and owning his own sheep, while Bathsheba has been well-educated and presumably comes from a good family, but now seems to be orphaned and reliant on the charity of her relatives. Bathsheba's high-spirited and somewhat inconsistent character is made clear from the beginning: when she thinks she is alone, she engages in playful acts like gazing at herself in the hand-mirror and laying flat on the back of her pony to avoid low-hanging branches. At the same time, she is easily embarrassed when it becomes clear that Gabriel has seen her engaging in these behaviors. While she does not seem to like having been caught in irreverent behavior, Bathsheba is clearly marked out as an unconventionally strong-willed and self-reliant woman. She refuses to comply with the demands of the toll gate-keeper, and she takes a hands-on approach to farm work. Gabriel seems to find the combination of her playfulness and competence deeply alluring, especially in contrast to his own somewhat serious demeanor. He is clearly intrigued by her from the first time he sees her, and after she rescues him, he becomes rapidly infatuated. The narrative and then Bathsheba herself both seem to raise the question of how profound Gabriel's love can be, given how little time the two have spent together when he proposes. He seems willing to assume that they will be compatible, and his explanation of why they should marry focuses on the material comforts he can offer her. Gabriel is clearly somewhat shy and insecure since he abandons hope of wooing Bathsheba as soon as he hears she has other suitors, but his promising prospects give him some confidence in believing he could be a good provider. He also seems fairly unromantic about his hopes, since he tells Bathsheba he would be happy to marry her even if she does not yet love him, but at the same time, he passionately declares he will never stop having feelings for her.

The first chapter introduces us to Gabriel Oak, our hero, a 28-year-old shepherd who has earned enough to acquire a small piece of land of his own. He has bought a farm of 200 sheep, many of the ewes pregnant. In the first scene, he watches a young woman with black hair drive up in a carriage laden with goods. Gabriel observes her as she waits for her driver. Thinking she is alone, she takes out a mirror and gazes at herself. Shortly afterward, he sees her again, stopped at a toll gate. She is arguing with the gatekeeper over the toll and Gabriel steps in to pay the two pence for her. When she drives off, he speaks with the gatekeeper and tells him that the black-haired woman has one fault: "vanity." Tending to his sheep over the next few weeks, Gabriel spots the woman on several occasions as she walks to milk a cow at a nearby dairy. In several scenes he watches her without being seen, and he learns that she lives with her aunt. They meet when he goes to look for the hat she has lost, but he embarrasses her with his bold manner. Then, one night, Gabriel falls asleep in his shepherd's hut with the windows closed but the hearth still lit; he nearly dies from smoke inhalation but the woman breaks in and saves his life. He thanks her and asks her name; she refuses to tell him outright, challenging him to find it out for himself. Gabriel learns that her name is Bathsheba Everdene. He visits her aunt in order to ask for her niece's hand in marriage, but the aunt tells him that Bathsheba already has many lovers. Bathsheba runs after Gabriel to tell him that what her aunt has said is untrue, and in a funny and misunderstanding-laden exchange, the two discuss the possibility of their marriage. Gabriel assumes that if she has run after him to tell him he may court her, then she must be interested; however, she assures him that she would never marry him because she does not love him. When he asks her a second time and she again refuses, he at last agrees to drop the matter, though he declares he will always love her.

Commentary From the very first chapter, the novel's rustic focus emerges. Hardy's treatment of his subject alternates between a painstaking realism and an idealized romanticization: While he details the minutiae of rustic culture and includes specific information about the practice of farming, he also links Gabriel to the pastoral literary tradition, an ancient classical form that enjoyed new popularity during the Renaissance. Playing his flute as he tends his sheep, Gabriel evokes the carefree, flute-playing shepherds that populated these poems' idyllic landscapes. Furthermore, throughout the novel Gabriel will occupy the position of the observer who watches others make mistakes without ever implicating himself in the action; the traditional pastoral lyric commented on the civilized world in a tone of similar detachment. At the same time, the novel has the plot of a romance: A man meets a woman and falls in love. Hardy avidly analyzes the way a person in love forms ideas about the loved one, even if the two share only the slightest acquaintance. He avidly analyzes the delusions of human psychology, particularly regarding love, concluding that love is rarely returned with equal intensity, despite what the lover leads himself/herself to believe. Gabriel's conversation with Bathsheba shows her to be a capricious, spirited young woman who has never been in love. The two discuss marriage with remarkable frankness. Bathsheba admits that she would like to have all the trappings of marriage--she would delight in a piano, pets, and her own carriage; she would enjoy seeing her name in the newspaper's marriage announcements--but she objects to the concept of having a husband in the first place and to losing her freedom. While Bathsheba seems a bit superficial, her independence and strength are admirable, and she remains a sympathetic character.