TROUBLES IN THE FOLD--A MESSAGE

Gabriel Oak had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for about
four-and-twenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen
Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and half-a-dozen others, came
running up to the house of the mistress of the Upper Farm.

"Whatever IS the matter, men?" she said, meeting them at the door
just as she was coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a
moment from the close compression of her two red lips, with which
she had accompanied the exertion of pulling on a tight glove.

"Sixty!" said Joseph Poorgrass.

"Seventy!" said Moon.

"Fifty-nine!" said Susan Tall's husband.

"--Sheep have broke fence," said Fray.

"--And got into a field of young clover," said Tall.

"--Young clover!" said Moon.

"--Clover!" said Joseph Poorgrass.

"And they be getting blasted," said Henery Fray.

"That they be," said Joseph.

"And will all die as dead as nits, if they bain't got out and cured!"
said Tall.

Joseph's countenance was drawn into lines and puckers by his concern.
Fray's forehead was wrinkled both perpendicularly and crosswise,
after the pattern of a portcullis, expressive of a double despair.
Laban Tall's lips were thin, and his face was rigid.  Matthew's jaws
sank, and his eyes turned whichever way the strongest muscle happened
to pull them.

"Yes," said Joseph, "and I was sitting at home, looking for
Ephesians, and says I to myself, ''Tis nothing but Corinthians and
Thessalonians in this danged Testament,' when who should come in but
Henery there: 'Joseph,' he said, 'the sheep have blasted
theirselves--'"

With Bathsheba it was a moment when thought was speech and speech
exclamation.  Moreover, she had hardly recovered her equanimity since
the disturbance which she had suffered from Oak's remarks.

"That's enough--that's enough!--oh, you fools!" she cried, throwing
the parasol and Prayer-book into the passage, and running out of
doors in the direction signified.  "To come to me, and not go and get
them out directly!  Oh, the stupid numskulls!"

Her eyes were at their darkest and brightest now.  Bathsheba's beauty
belonging rather to the demonian than to the angelic school, she
never looked so well as when she was angry--and particularly when the
effect was heightened by a rather dashing velvet dress, carefully put
on before a glass.

All the ancient men ran in a jumbled throng after her to the
clover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about half-way,
like an individual withering in a world which was more and more
insupportable.  Having once received the stimulus that her presence
always gave them they went round among the sheep with a will.  The
majority of the afflicted animals were lying down, and could not be
stirred.  These were bodily lifted out, and the others driven into
the adjoining field.  Here, after the lapse of a few minutes, several
more fell down, and lay helpless and livid as the rest.

Bathsheba, with a sad, bursting heart, looked at these primest
specimens of her prime flock as they rolled there--

   Swoln with wind and the rank mist they drew.

Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and
short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended.

"Oh, what can I do, what can I do!" said Bathsheba, helplessly.
"Sheep are such unfortunate animals!--there's always something
happening to them!  I never knew a flock pass a year without getting
into some scrape or other."

"There's only one way of saving them," said Tall.

"What way?  Tell me quick!"

"They must be pierced in the side with a thing made on purpose."

"Can you do it?  Can I?"

"No, ma'am.  We can't, nor you neither.  It must be done in a
particular spot.  If ye go to the right or left but an inch you stab
the ewe and kill her.  Not even a shepherd can do it, as a rule."

"Then they must die," she said, in a resigned tone.

"Only one man in the neighbourhood knows the way," said Joseph, now
just come up.  "He could cure 'em all if he were here."

"Who is he?  Let's get him!"

"Shepherd Oak," said Matthew.  "Ah, he's a clever man in talents!"

"Ah, that he is so!" said Joseph Poorgrass.

"True--he's the man," said Laban Tall.

"How dare you name that man in my presence!" she said excitedly.  "I
told you never to allude to him, nor shall you if you stay with me.
Ah!" she added, brightening, "Farmer Boldwood knows!"

"O no, ma'am" said Matthew.  "Two of his store ewes got into some
vetches t'other day, and were just like these.  He sent a man on
horseback here post-haste for Gable, and Gable went and saved 'em.
Farmer Boldwood hev got the thing they do it with.  'Tis a holler
pipe, with a sharp pricker inside.  Isn't it, Joseph?"

"Ay--a holler pipe," echoed Joseph.  "That's what 'tis."

"Ay, sure--that's the machine," chimed in Henery Fray, reflectively,
with an Oriental indifference to the flight of time.

"Well," burst out Bathsheba, "don't stand there with your 'ayes'
and your 'sures' talking at me!  Get somebody to cure the sheep
instantly!"

All then stalked off in consternation, to get somebody as directed,
without any idea of who it was to be.  In a minute they had vanished
through the gate, and she stood alone with the dying flock.

"Never will I send for him--never!" she said firmly.

One of the ewes here contracted its muscles horribly, extended
itself, and jumped high into the air.  The leap was an astonishing
one.  The ewe fell heavily, and lay still.

Bathsheba went up to it.  The sheep was dead.

"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do!" she again exclaimed, wringing
her hands.  "I won't send for him.  No, I won't!"

The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide
with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself.  It is often flung
out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst
strong, required no enunciation to prove it so.  The "No, I won't" of
Bathsheba meant virtually, "I think I must."

She followed her assistants through the gate, and lifted her hand to
one of them.  Laban answered to her signal.

"Where is Oak staying?"

"Across the valley at Nest Cottage!"

"Jump on the bay mare, and ride across, and say he must return
instantly--that I say so."

Tall scrambled off to the field, and in two minutes was on Poll,
the bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of rein.  He
diminished down the hill.

Bathsheba watched.  So did all the rest.  Tall cantered along the
bridle-path through Sixteen Acres, Sheeplands, Middle Field, The
Flats, Cappel's Piece, shrank almost to a point, crossed the bridge,
and ascended from the valley through Springmead and Whitepits on the
other side.  The cottage to which Gabriel had retired before taking
his final departure from the locality was visible as a white spot on
the opposite hill, backed by blue firs.  Bathsheba walked up and
down.  The men entered the field and endeavoured to ease the anguish
of the dumb creatures by rubbing them.  Nothing availed.

Bathsheba continued walking.  The horse was seen descending the
hill, and the wearisome series had to be repeated in reverse order:
Whitepits, Springmead, Cappel's Piece, The Flats, Middle Field,
Sheeplands, Sixteen Acres.  She hoped Tall had had presence of mind
enough to give the mare up to Gabriel, and return himself on foot.
The rider neared them.  It was Tall.

"Oh, what folly!" said Bathsheba.

Gabriel was not visible anywhere.

"Perhaps he is already gone!" she said.

Tall came into the inclosure, and leapt off, his face tragic as
Morton's after the battle of Shrewsbury.

"Well?" said Bathsheba, unwilling to believe that her verbal
_lettre-de-cachet_ could possibly have miscarried.

"He says BEGGARS MUSTN'T BE CHOOSERS," replied Laban.

"What!" said the young farmer, opening her eyes and drawing in her
breath for an outburst.  Joseph Poorgrass retired a few steps behind
a hurdle.

"He says he shall not come onless you request en to come civilly and
in a proper manner, as becomes any 'ooman begging a favour."

"Oh, oh, that's his answer!  Where does he get his airs?  Who am I,
then, to be treated like that?  Shall I beg to a man who has begged
to me?"

Another of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead.

The men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.

Bathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears.  The strait she was
in through pride and shrewishness could not be disguised longer: she
burst out crying bitterly; they all saw it; and she attempted no
further concealment.

"I wouldn't cry about it, miss," said William Smallbury,
compassionately.  "Why not ask him softer like?  I'm sure he'd come
then.  Gable is a true man in that way."

Bathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes.  "Oh, it is a wicked
cruelty to me--it is--it is!" she murmured.  "And he drives me to do
what I wouldn't; yes, he does!--Tall, come indoors."

After this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an
establishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels.  Here she
sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive
sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell
follows a storm.  The note was none the less polite for being written
in a hurry.  She held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then
added these words at the bottom:--

   "DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!"

She looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips,
as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in
examining whether such strategy were justifiable.  The note was
despatched as the message had been, and Bathsheba waited indoors
for the result.

It was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the
messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again
outside.  She could not watch this time, but, leaning over the old
bureau at which she had written the letter, closed her eyes, as if
to keep out both hope and fear.

The case, however, was a promising one.  Gabriel was not angry: he
was simply neutral, although her first command had been so haughty.
Such imperiousness would have damned a little less beauty; and
on the other hand, such beauty would have redeemed a little less
imperiousness.

She went out when the horse was heard, and looked up.  A mounted
figure passed between her and the sky, and drew on towards the field
of sheep, the rider turning his face in receding.  Gabriel looked at
her.  It was a moment when a woman's eyes and tongue tell distinctly
opposite tales. Bathsheba looked full of gratitude, and she said:--

"Oh, Gabriel, how could you serve me so unkindly!"

Such a tenderly-shaped reproach for his previous delay was the
one speech in the language that he could pardon for not being
commendation of his readiness now.

Gabriel murmured a confused reply, and hastened on.  She knew from
the look which sentence in her note had brought him.  Bathsheba
followed to the field.

Gabriel was already among the turgid, prostrate forms.  He had flung
off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and taken from his pocket
the instrument of salvation.  It was a small tube or trochar, with
a lance passing down the inside; and Gabriel began to use it with a
dexterity that would have graced a hospital surgeon.  Passing his
hand over the sheep's left flank, and selecting the proper point, he
punctured the skin and rumen with the lance as it stood in the tube;
then he suddenly withdrew the lance, retaining the tube in its place.
A current of air rushed up the tube, forcible enough to have
extinguished a candle held at the orifice.

It has been said that mere ease after torment is delight for a time;
and the countenances of these poor creatures expressed it now.
Forty-nine operations were successfully performed.  Owing to the
great hurry necessitated by the far-gone state of some of the flock,
Gabriel missed his aim in one case, and in one only--striking wide
of the mark, and inflicting a mortal blow at once upon the suffering
ewe.  Four had died; three recovered without an operation.  The total
number of sheep which had thus strayed and injured themselves so
dangerously was fifty-seven.

When the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bathsheba came and
looked him in the face.

"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she said, smiling winningly,
and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end,
because there was going to be another smile soon.

"I will," said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.

THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not
making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking
good spirits when they are indispensable.  Gabriel lately, for the
first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent
in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent--conditions
which, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without
them is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the
favourable conjunction should have occurred.  But this incurable
loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously.  The
spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap
might soon come which could not.

It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing season
culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest pasture, being
all health and colour.  Every green was young, every pore was
open, and every stalk was swollen with racing currents of juice.
God was palpably present in the country, and the devil had gone
with the world to town.  Flossy catkins of the later kinds,
fern-sprouts like bishops' croziers, the square-headed moschatel,
the odd cuckoo-pint,--like an apoplectic saint in a niche of
malachite,--snow-white ladies'-smocks, the toothwort, approximating
to human flesh, the enchanter's night-shade, and the black-petaled
doleful-bells, were among the quainter objects of the vegetable world
in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; and of the animal,
the metamorphosed figures of Mr. Jan Coggan, the master-shearer; the
second and third shearers, who travelled in the exercise of their
calling, and do not require definition by name; Henery Fray the
fourth shearer, Susan Tall's husband the fifth, Joseph Poorgrass
the sixth, young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and Gabriel Oak as
general supervisor.  None of these were clothed to any extent worth
mentioning, each appearing to have hit in the matter of raiment the
decent mean between a high and low caste Hindoo.  An angularity of
lineament, and a fixity of facial machinery in general, proclaimed
that serious work was the order of the day.

They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the
Shearing-barn, which on ground-plan resembled a church with
transepts.  It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church
of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity.  Whether the barn had
ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to
be aware; no trace of such surroundings remained.  The vast porches
at the sides, lofty enough to admit a waggon laden to its highest
with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy-pointed arches of
stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin
of a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been
attempted.  The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in
by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was far nobler in design,
because more wealthy in material, than nine-tenths of those in our
modern churches.  Along each side wall was a range of striding
buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which
were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions
the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation.

One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either
the church or the castle, akin to it in age and style, that the
purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with
that to which it was still applied.  Unlike and superior to either
of those two typical remnants of mediaevalism, the old barn embodied
practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time.
Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with
the spirit of the modern beholder.  Standing before this abraded
pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its
past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity
throughout--a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the
permanence of the idea which had heaped it up.  The fact that four
centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired
any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had
battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with
a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt
to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers.  For once
mediaevalism and modernism had a common stand-point.  The lanceolate
windows, the time-eaten archstones and chamfers, the orientation of
the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no
exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed.  The defence and
salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion,
and a desire.

To-day the large side doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit
a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations,
which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick
oak, black with age and polished by the beating of flails for many
generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as
the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion.  Here the shearers
knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms,
and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle
with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man.  Beneath
them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving
merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.

This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did
not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which
is implied by the contrast of date.  In comparison with cities,
Weatherbury was immutable.  The citizen's THEN is the rustic's
NOW.  In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris
ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were
included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a
mark on its face or tone.  Five decades hardly modified the cut of a
gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair.
Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase.  In
these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old;
his old times are still new; his present is futurity.

So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in
harmony with the barn.

The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave
and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep
being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in
one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep
were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss
of time.  In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three
women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering
up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying
them round.  They were indifferently well assisted by the old
maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had
passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.

Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that
there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the
animals were shorn close.  Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her
bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time
being spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for
them.  At the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of
mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of
bread and cheese.

Bathsheba, after throwing a glance here, a caution there, and
lecturing one of the younger operators who had allowed his last
finished sheep to go off among the flock without re-stamping it with
her initials, came again to Gabriel, as he put down the luncheon to
drag a frightened ewe to his shear-station, flinging it over upon its
back with a dexterous twist of the arm.  He lopped off the tresses
about its head, and opened up the neck and collar, his mistress
quietly looking on.

"She blushes at the insult," murmured Bathsheba, watching the pink
flush which arose and overspread the neck and shoulders of the ewe
where they were left bare by the clicking shears--a flush which was
enviable, for its delicacy, by many queens of coteries, and would
have been creditable, for its promptness, to any woman in the world.

Poor Gabriel's soul was fed with a luxury of content by having her
over him, her eyes critically regarding his skilful shears, which
apparently were going to gather up a piece of the flesh at every
close, and yet never did so.  Like Guildenstern, Oak was happy in
that he was not over happy.  He had no wish to converse with her:
that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their
own, and containing no others in the world, was enough.

So the chatter was all on her side.  There is a loquacity that tells
nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says
much: that was Gabriel's.  Full of this dim and temperate bliss, he
went on to fling the ewe over upon her other side, covering her head
with his knee, gradually running the shears line after line round her
dewlap; thence about her flank and back, and finishing over the tail.

"Well done, and done quickly!" said Bathsheba, looking at her watch
as the last snip resounded.

"How long, miss?" said Gabriel, wiping his brow.

"Three-and-twenty minutes and a half since you took the first lock
from its forehead.  It is the first time that I have ever seen one
done in less than half an hour."

The clean, sleek creature arose from its fleece--how perfectly
like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be
realized--looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which
lay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion
visible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed,
was white as snow, and without flaw or blemish of the minutest kind.

"Cain Ball!"

"Yes, Mister Oak; here I be!"

Cainy now runs forward with the tar-pot.  "B. E." is newly stamped
upon the shorn skin, and away the simple dam leaps, panting, over the
board into the shirtless flock outside.  Then up comes Maryann;
throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up,
and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of
unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and
far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort
derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure--before
the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried,
stiffened, and been washed out--rendering it just now as superior
to anything WOOLLEN as cream is superior to milk-and-water.

But heartless circumstance could not leave entire Gabriel's happiness
of this morning.  The rams, old ewes, and two-shear ewes had duly
undergone their stripping, and the men were proceeding with the
shear-lings and hogs, when Oak's belief that she was going to stand
pleasantly by and time him through another performance was painfully
interrupted by Farmer Boldwood's appearance in the extremest corner
of the barn.  Nobody seemed to have perceived his entry, but there he
certainly was.  Boldwood always carried with him a social atmosphere
of his own, which everybody felt who came near him; and the talk,
which Bathsheba's presence had somewhat suppressed, was now totally
suspended.

He crossed over towards Bathsheba, who turned to greet him with a
carriage of perfect ease.  He spoke to her in low tones, and she
instinctively modulated her own to the same pitch, and her voice
ultimately even caught the inflection of his.  She was far from
having a wish to appear mysteriously connected with him; but woman at
the impressionable age gravitates to the larger body not only in her
choice of words, which is apparent every day, but even in her shades
of tone and humour, when the influence is great.

What they conversed about was not audible to Gabriel, who was too
independent to get near, though too concerned to disregard.  The
issue of their dialogue was the taking of her hand by the courteous
farmer to help her over the spreading-board into the bright June
sunlight outside.  Standing beside the sheep already shorn, they went
on talking again.  Concerning the flock?  Apparently not. Gabriel
theorized, not without truth, that in quiet discussion of any matter
within reach of the speakers' eyes, these are usually fixed upon
it.  Bathsheba demurely regarded a contemptible straw lying upon the
ground, in a way which suggested less ovine criticism than womanly
embarrassment.  She became more or less red in the cheek, the blood
wavering in uncertain flux and reflux over the sensitive space
between ebb and flood.  Gabriel sheared on, constrained and sad.

She left Boldwood's side, and he walked up and down alone for nearly
a quarter of an hour.  Then she reappeared in her new riding-habit of
myrtle green, which fitted her to the waist as a rind fits its fruit;
and young Bob Coggan led on her mare, Boldwood fetching his own horse
from the tree under which it had been tied.

Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in endeavouring to continue
his shearing at the same time that he watched Boldwood's manner,
he snipped the sheep in the groin.  The animal plunged; Bathsheba
instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood.

"Oh, Gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remonstrance, "you who are
so strict with the other men--see what you are doing yourself!"

To an outsider there was not much to complain of in this remark; but
to Oak, who knew Bathsheba to be well aware that she herself was the
cause of the poor ewe's wound, because she had wounded the ewe's
shearer in a still more vital part, it had a sting which the abiding
sense of his inferiority to both herself and Boldwood was not
calculated to heal.  But a manly resolve to recognize boldly that he
had no longer a lover's interest in her, helped him occasionally to
conceal a feeling.

"Bottle!" he shouted, in an unmoved voice of routine.  Cainy Ball ran
up, the wound was anointed, and the shearing continued.

Boldwood gently tossed Bathsheba into the saddle, and before they
turned away she again spoke out to Oak with the same dominative and
tantalizing graciousness.

"I am going now to see Mr. Boldwood's Leicesters.  Take my place in
the barn, Gabriel, and keep the men carefully to their work."

The horses' heads were put about, and they trotted away.

Boldwood's deep attachment was a matter of great interest among all
around him; but, after having been pointed out for so many years
as the perfect exemplar of thriving bachelorship, his lapse was an
anticlimax somewhat resembling that of St. John Long's death by
consumption in the midst of his proofs that it was not a fatal
disease.

"That means matrimony," said Temperance Miller, following them out of
sight with her eyes.

"I reckon that's the size o't," said Coggan, working along without
looking up.

"Well, better wed over the mixen than over the moor," said Laban
Tall, turning his sheep.

Henery Fray spoke, exhibiting miserable eyes at the same time: "I
don't see why a maid should take a husband when she's bold enough
to fight her own battles, and don't want a home; for 'tis keeping
another woman out.  But let it be, for 'tis a pity he and she should
trouble two houses."

As usual with decided characters, Bathsheba invariably provoked the
criticism of individuals like Henery Fray.  Her emblazoned fault was
to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in
her likings.  We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb,
but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are
known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their
dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no
attribute at all.

Henery continued in a more complaisant mood: "I once hinted my mind
to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so
to such a froward piece.  You all know, neighbours, what a man I be,
and how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling
wi' scarn?"

"We do, we do, Henery."

"So I said, 'Mistress Everdene, there's places empty, and there's
gifted men willing; but the spite'--no, not the spite--I didn't say
spite--'but the villainy of the contrarikind,' I said (meaning
womankind), 'keeps 'em out.'  That wasn't too strong for her, say?"

"Passably well put."

"Yes; and I would have said it, had death and salvation overtook me
for it.  Such is my spirit when I have a mind."

"A true man, and proud as a lucifer."

"You see the artfulness?  Why, 'twas about being baily really; but
I didn't put it so plain that she could understand my meaning, so I
could lay it on all the stronger.  That was my depth! ... However,
let her marry an she will.  Perhaps 'tis high time.  I believe Farmer
Boldwood kissed her behind the spear-bed at the sheep-washing t'other
day--that I do."

"What a lie!" said Gabriel.

"Ah, neighbour Oak--how'st know?" said, Henery, mildly.

"Because she told me all that passed," said Oak, with a pharisaical
sense that he was not as other shearers in this matter.

"Ye have a right to believe it," said Henery, with dudgeon; "a very
true right.  But I mid see a little distance into things!  To be
long-headed enough for a baily's place is a poor mere trifle--yet
a trifle more than nothing.  However, I look round upon life quite
cool.  Do you heed me, neighbours?  My words, though made as simple
as I can, mid be rather deep for some heads."

"O yes, Henery, we quite heed ye."

"A strange old piece, goodmen--whirled about from here to yonder, as
if I were nothing!  A little warped, too.  But I have my depths; ha,
and even my great depths!  I might gird at a certain shepherd, brain
to brain.  But no--O no!"

"A strange old piece, ye say!" interposed the maltster, in a
querulous voice.  "At the same time ye be no old man worth naming--no
old man at all.  Yer teeth bain't half gone yet; and what's a old
man's standing if so be his teeth bain't gone?  Weren't I stale in
wedlock afore ye were out of arms?  'Tis a poor thing to be sixty,
when there's people far past four-score--a boast weak as water."

It was the unvarying custom in Weatherbury to sink minor differences
when the maltster had to be pacified.

"Weak as water! yes," said Jan Coggan. "Malter, we feel ye to be a
wonderful veteran man, and nobody can gainsay it."

"Nobody," said Joseph Poorgrass.  "Ye be a very rare old spectacle,
malter, and we all admire ye for that gift."

"Ay, and as a young man, when my senses were in prosperity, I was
likewise liked by a good-few who knowed me," said the maltster.

"'Ithout doubt you was--'ithout doubt."

The bent and hoary man was satisfied, and so apparently was Henery
Fray.  That matters should continue pleasant Maryann spoke, who, what
with her brown complexion, and the working wrapper of rusty linsey,
had at present the mellow hue of an old sketch in oils--notably some
of Nicholas Poussin's:--

"Do anybody know of a crooked man, or a lame, or any second-hand
fellow at all that would do for poor me?" said Maryann.  "A perfect
one I don't expect to get at my time of life.  If I could hear of
such a thing twould do me more good than toast and ale."

Coggan furnished a suitable reply.  Oak went on with his shearing,
and said not another word.  Pestilent moods had come, and teased
away his quiet.  Bathsheba had shown indications of anointing him
above his fellows by installing him as the bailiff that the farm
imperatively required.  He did not covet the post relatively to the
farm: in relation to herself, as beloved by him and unmarried to
another, he had coveted it.  His readings of her seemed now to be
vapoury and indistinct.  His lecture to her was, he thought, one of
the absurdest mistakes.  Far from coquetting with Boldwood, she had
trifled with himself in thus feigning that she had trifled with
another.  He was inwardly convinced that, in accordance with the
anticipations of his easy-going and worse-educated comrades, that day
would see Boldwood the accepted husband of Miss Everdene.  Gabriel
at this time of his life had out-grown the instinctive dislike which
every Christian boy has for reading the Bible, perusing it now
quite frequently, and he inwardly said, "'I find more bitter than
death the woman whose heart is snares and nets!'" This was mere
exclamation--the froth of the storm.  He adored Bathsheba just the
same.

"We workfolk shall have some lordly junketing to-night," said Cainy
Ball, casting forth his thoughts in a new direction.  "This morning I
see 'em making the great puddens in the milking-pails--lumps of fat
as big as yer thumb, Mister Oak!  I've never seed such splendid large
knobs of fat before in the days of my life--they never used to be
bigger then a horse-bean.  And there was a great black crock upon the
brandish with his legs a-sticking out, but I don't know what was in
within."

"And there's two bushels of biffins for apple-pies," said Maryann.

"Well, I hope to do my duty by it all," said Joseph Poorgrass, in a
pleasant, masticating manner of anticipation.  "Yes; victuals and
drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the
form of words may be used.  'Tis the gospel of the body, without
which we perish, so to speak it."

EVENTIDE--A SECOND DECLARATION

For the shearing-supper a long table was placed on the grass-plot
beside the house, the end of the table being thrust over the sill
of the wide parlour window and a foot or two into the room.  Miss
Everdene sat inside the window, facing down the table.  She was
thus at the head without mingling with the men.

This evening Bathsheba was unusually excited, her red cheeks and lips
contrasting lustrously with the mazy skeins of her shadowy hair.  She
seemed to expect assistance, and the seat at the bottom of the table
was at her request left vacant until after they had begun the meal.
She then asked Gabriel to take the place and the duties appertaining
to that end, which he did with great readiness.

At this moment Mr. Boldwood came in at the gate, and crossed the
green to Bathsheba at the window.  He apologized for his lateness:
his arrival was evidently by arrangement.

"Gabriel," said she, "will you move again, please, and let Mr.
Boldwood come there?"

Oak moved in silence back to his original seat.

The gentleman-farmer was dressed in cheerful style, in a new coat
and white waistcoat, quite contrasting with his usual sober suits of
grey.  Inwardy, too, he was blithe, and consequently chatty to an
exceptional degree.  So also was Bathsheba now that he had come,
though the uninvited presence of Pennyways, the bailiff who had been
dismissed for theft, disturbed her equanimity for a while.

Supper being ended, Coggan began on his own private account, without
reference to listeners:--

   I've lost my love, and I care not,
   I've lost my love, and I care not;
     I shall soon have another
     That's better than t'other;
   I've lost my love, and I care not.

This lyric, when concluded, was received with a silently appreciative
gaze at the table, implying that the performance, like a work by
those established authors who are independent of notices in the
papers, was a well-known delight which required no applause.

"Now, Master Poorgrass, your song!" said Coggan.

"I be all but in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me," said Joseph,
diminishing himself.

"Nonsense; wou'st never be so ungrateful, Joseph--never!" said
Coggan, expressing hurt feelings by an inflection of voice.  "And
mistress is looking hard at ye, as much as to say, 'Sing at once,
Joseph Poorgrass.'"

"Faith, so she is; well, I must suffer it! ... Just eye my features,
and see if the tell-tale blood overheats me much, neighbours?"

"No, yer blushes be quite reasonable," said Coggan.

"I always tries to keep my colours from rising when a beauty's eyes
get fixed on me," said Joseph, differently; "but if so be 'tis willed
they do, they must."

"Now, Joseph, your song, please," said Bathsheba, from the window.

"Well, really, ma'am," he replied, in a yielding tone, "I don't know
what to say.  It would be a poor plain ballet of my own composure."

"Hear, hear!" said the supper-party.

Poorgrass, thus assured, trilled forth a flickering yet commendable
piece of sentiment, the tune of which consisted of the key-note and
another, the latter being the sound chiefly dwelt upon.  This was so
successful that he rashly plunged into a second in the same breath,
after a few false starts:--

   I sow'-ed th'-e .....
   I sow'-ed .....
   I sow'-ed th'-e seeds' of' love',
      I-it was' all' i'-in the'-e spring',
   I-in A'-pril', Ma'-ay, a'-nd sun'-ny' June',
      When sma'-all bi'-irds they' do' sing.

"Well put out of hand," said Coggan, at the end of the verse.  "'They
do sing' was a very taking paragraph."

"Ay; and there was a pretty place at 'seeds of love.' and 'twas well
heaved out.  Though 'love' is a nasty high corner when a man's voice
is getting crazed.  Next verse, Master Poorgrass."

But during this rendering young Bob Coggan exhibited one of those
anomalies which will afflict little people when other persons are
particularly serious: in trying to check his laughter, he pushed down
his throat as much of the tablecloth as he could get hold of, when,
after continuing hermetically sealed for a short time, his mirth
burst out through his nose.  Joseph perceived it, and with hectic
cheeks of indignation instantly ceased singing.  Coggan boxed Bob's
ears immediately.

"Go on, Joseph--go on, and never mind the young scamp," said Coggan.
"'Tis a very catching ballet.  Now then again--the next bar; I'll
help ye to flourish up the shrill notes where yer wind is rather
wheezy:--

   "Oh the wi'-il-lo'-ow tree' will' twist',
   And the wil'-low' tre'-ee wi'-ill twine'."

But the singer could not be set going again.  Bob Coggan was sent
home for his ill manners, and tranquility was restored by Jacob
Smallbury, who volunteered a ballad as inclusive and interminable
as that with which the worthy toper old Silenus amused on a similar
occasion the swains Chromis and Mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of
his day.

It was still the beaming time of evening, though night was stealthily
making itself visible low down upon the ground, the western lines of
light raking the earth without alighting upon it to any extent, or
illuminating the dead levels at all.  The sun had crept round the
tree as a last effort before death, and then began to sink, the
shearers' lower parts becoming steeped in embrowning twilight, whilst
their heads and shoulders were still enjoying day, touched with a
yellow of self-sustained brilliancy that seemed inherent rather than
acquired.

The sun went down in an ochreous mist; but they sat, and talked on,
and grew as merry as the gods in Homer's heaven.  Bathsheba still
remained enthroned inside the window, and occupied herself in
knitting, from which she sometimes looked up to view the fading scene
outside.  The slow twilight expanded and enveloped them completely
before the signs of moving were shown.

Gabriel suddenly missed Farmer Boldwood from his place at the bottom
of the table.  How long he had been gone Oak did not know; but he
had apparently withdrawn into the encircling dusk.  Whilst he was
thinking of this, Liddy brought candles into the back part of the
room overlooking the shearers, and their lively new flames shone down
the table and over the men, and dispersed among the green shadows
behind.  Bathsheba's form, still in its original position, was now
again distinct between their eyes and the light, which revealed that
Boldwood had gone inside the room, and was sitting near her.

Next came the question of the evening.  Would Miss Everdene sing to
them the song she always sang so charmingly--"The Banks of Allan
Water"--before they went home?

After a moment's consideration Bathsheba assented, beckoning to
Gabriel, who hastened up into the coveted atmosphere.

"Have you brought your flute?" she whispered.

"Yes, miss."

"Play to my singing, then."

She stood up in the window-opening, facing the men, the candles
behind her, Gabriel on her right hand, immediately outside the
sash-frame.  Boldwood had drawn up on her left, within the room.
Her singing was soft and rather tremulous at first, but it soon
swelled to a steady clearness.  Subsequent events caused one of the
verses to be remembered for many months, and even years, by more
than one of those who were gathered there:--

   For his bride a soldier sought her,
     And a winning tongue had he:
   On the banks of Allan Water
     None was gay as she!

In addition to the dulcet piping of Gabriel's flute, Boldwood
supplied a bass in his customary profound voice, uttering his notes
so softly, however, as to abstain entirely from making anything like
an ordinary duet of the song; they rather formed a rich unexplored
shadow, which threw her tones into relief.  The shearers reclined
against each other as at suppers in the early ages of the world, and
so silent and absorbed were they that her breathing could almost be
heard between the bars; and at the end of the ballad, when the last
tone loitered on to an inexpressible close, there arose that buzz of
pleasure which is the attar of applause.

It is scarcely necessary to state that Gabriel could not avoid noting
the farmer's bearing to-night towards their entertainer.  Yet there
was nothing exceptional in his actions beyond what appertained to
his time of performing them.  It was when the rest were all looking
away that Boldwood observed her; when they regarded her he turned
aside; when they thanked or praised he was silent; when they
were inattentive he murmured his thanks.  The meaning lay in the
difference between actions, none of which had any meaning of itself;
and the necessity of being jealous, which lovers are troubled with,
did not lead Oak to underestimate these signs.

Bathsheba then wished them good-night, withdrew from the window, and
retired to the back part of the room, Boldwood thereupon closing the
sash and the shutters, and remaining inside with her.  Oak wandered
away under the quiet and scented trees.  Recovering from the softer
impressions produced by Bathsheba's voice, the shearers rose to
leave, Coggan turning to Pennyways as he pushed back the bench to
pass out:--

"I like to give praise where praise is due, and the man deserves
it--that 'a do so," he remarked, looking at the worthy thief, as if
he were the masterpiece of some world-renowned artist.

"I'm sure I should never have believed it if we hadn't proved it, so
to allude," hiccupped Joseph Poorgrass, "that every cup, every one of
the best knives and forks, and every empty bottle be in their place
as perfect now as at the beginning, and not one stole at all."

"I'm sure I don't deserve half the praise you give me," said the
virtuous thief, grimly.

"Well, I'll say this for Pennyways," added Coggan, "that whenever he
do really make up his mind to do a noble thing in the shape of a good
action, as I could see by his face he did to-night afore sitting
down, he's generally able to carry it out.  Yes, I'm proud to say,
neighbours, that he's stole nothing at all."

"Well, 'tis an honest deed, and we thank ye for it, Pennyways," said
Joseph; to which opinion the remainder of the company subscribed
unanimously.

At this time of departure, when nothing more was visible of the
inside of the parlour than a thin and still chink of light between
the shutters, a passionate scene was in course of enactment there.

Miss Everdene and Boldwood were alone.  Her cheeks had lost a
great deal of their healthful fire from the very seriousness of
her position; but her eye was bright with the excitement of a
triumph--though it was a triumph which had rather been contemplated
than desired.

She was standing behind a low arm-chair, from which she had just
risen, and he was kneeling in it--inclining himself over its back
towards her, and holding her hand in both his own.  His body moved
restlessly, and it was with what Keats daintily calls a too happy
happiness.  This unwonted abstraction by love of all dignity from
a man of whom it had ever seemed the chief component, was, in its
distressing incongruity, a pain to her which quenched much of the
pleasure she derived from the proof that she was idolized.

"I will try to love you," she was saying, in a trembling voice quite
unlike her usual self-confidence.  "And if I can believe in any way
that I shall make you a good wife I shall indeed be willing to marry
you.  But, Mr. Boldwood, hesitation on so high a matter is honourable
in any woman, and I don't want to give a solemn promise to-night.  I
would rather ask you to wait a few weeks till I can see my situation
better.

"But you have every reason to believe that THEN--"

"I have every reason to hope that at the end of the five or six
weeks, between this time and harvest, that you say you are going to
be away from home, I shall be able to promise to be your wife," she
said, firmly.  "But remember this distinctly, I don't promise yet."

"It is enough; I don't ask more.  I can wait on those dear words.
And now, Miss Everdene, good-night!"

"Good-night," she said, graciously--almost tenderly; and Boldwood
withdrew with a serene smile.

Bathsheba knew more of him now; he had entirely bared his heart
before her, even until he had almost worn in her eyes the sorry look
of a grand bird without the feathers that make it grand.  She had
been awe-struck at her past temerity, and was struggling to make
amends without thinking whether the sin quite deserved the penalty
she was schooling herself to pay.  To have brought all this about her
ears was terrible; but after a while the situation was not without
a fearful joy.  The facility with which even the most timid women
sometimes acquire a relish for the dreadful when that is amalgamated
with a little triumph, is marvellous.

THE SAME NIGHT--THE FIR PLANTATION

Among the multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed
upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the
particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed,
to see that all was right and safe for the night.  Gabriel had
almost constantly preceded her in this tour every evening, watching
her affairs as carefully as any specially appointed officer of
surveillance could have done; but this tender devotion was to a
great extent unknown to his mistress, and as much as was known was
somewhat thanklessly received.  Women are never tired of bewailing
man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.

As watching is best done invisibly, she usually carried a dark
lantern in her hand, and every now and then turned on the light
to examine nooks and corners with the coolness of a metropolitan
policeman.  This coolness may have owed its existence not so much
to her fearlessness of expected danger as to her freedom from the
suspicion of any; her worst anticipated discovery being that a horse
might not be well bedded, the fowls not all in, or a door not closed.

This night the buildings were inspected as usual, and she went round
to the farm paddock.  Here the only sounds disturbing the stillness
were steady munchings of many mouths, and stentorian breathings from
all but invisible noses, ending in snores and puffs like the blowing
of bellows slowly.  Then the munching would recommence, when the
lively imagination might assist the eye to discern a group of
pink-white nostrils, shaped as caverns, and very clammy and humid on
their surfaces, not exactly pleasant to the touch until one got used
to them; the mouths beneath having a great partiality for closing
upon any loose end of Bathsheba's apparel which came within reach of
their tongues.  Above each of these a still keener vision suggested a
brown forehead and two staring though not unfriendly eyes, and above
all a pair of whitish crescent-shaped horns like two particularly
new moons, an occasional stolid "moo!" proclaiming beyond the shade
of a doubt that these phenomena were the features and persons of
Daisy, Whitefoot, Bonny-lass, Jolly-O, Spot, Twinkle-eye, etc.,
etc.--the respectable dairy of Devon cows belonging to Bathsheba
aforesaid.

Her way back to the house was by a path through a young plantation of
tapering firs, which had been planted some years earlier to shelter
the premises from the north wind.  By reason of the density of
the interwoven foliage overhead, it was gloomy there at cloudless
noontide, twilight in the evening, dark as midnight at dusk, and
black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.  To describe the spot
is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling
of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor
being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed
cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there.

This bit of the path was always the crux of the night's ramble,
though, before starting, her apprehensions of danger were not vivid
enough to lead her to take a companion.  Slipping along here covertly
as Time, Bathsheba fancied she could hear footsteps entering the
track at the opposite end.  It was certainly a rustle of footsteps.
Her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes.  She reassured
herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the
traveller was probably some villager returning home; regretting,
at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the
darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own
door.

The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the
point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and
pinned it forcibly to the ground.  The instantaneous check nearly
threw Bathsheba off her balance.  In recovering she struck against
warm clothes and buttons.

"A rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot or so
above her head.  "Have I hurt you, mate?"

"No," said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink away.

"We have got hitched together somehow, I think."

"Yes."

"Are you a woman?"

"Yes."

"A lady, I should have said."

"It doesn't matter."

"I am a man."

"Oh!"

Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.

"Is that a dark lantern you have?  I fancy so," said the man.

"Yes."

"If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free."

A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst
out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with
astonishment.

The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet.
He was a soldier.  His sudden appearance was to darkness what the
sound of a trumpet is to silence.  Gloom, the _genius loci_ at all
times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light
than by what the lantern lighted.  The contrast of this revelation
with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so
great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.

It was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become
entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress.  He
caught a view of her face.

"I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss," he said, with new-born
gallantry.

"Oh no--I can do it, thank you," she hastily replied, and stooped for
the performance.

The unfastening was not such a trifling affair.  The rowel of the
spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments,
that separation was likely to be a matter of time.

He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them
threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the
blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm.  It
radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation
gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming
distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.

He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment;
Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be
received point-blank with her own.  But she had obliquely noticed
that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his
sleeve.

Bathsheba pulled again.

"You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter," said
the soldier, drily.  "I must cut your dress if you are in such a
hurry."

"Yes--please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly.

"It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and he unwound
a cord from the little wheel.  She withdrew her own hand, but,
whether by accident or design, he touched it.  Bathsheba was vexed;
she hardly knew why.

His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end.
She looked at him again.

"Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the young
sergeant, without ceremony.

She coloured with embarrassment.  "'Twas unwillingly shown," she
replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity--which was very little--as
she could infuse into a position of captivity.

"I like you the better for that incivility, miss," he said.

"I should have liked--I wish--you had never shown yourself to me by
intruding here!" She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began
to give way like liliputian musketry.

"I deserve the chastisement your words give me.  But why should such
a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?"

"Go on your way, please."

"What, Beauty, and drag you after me?  Do but look; I never saw such
a tangle!"

"Oh, 'tis shameful of you; you have been making it worse on purpose
to keep me here--you have!"

"Indeed, I don't think so," said the sergeant, with a merry twinkle.

"I tell you you have!" she exclaimed, in high temper.  "I insist upon
undoing it.  Now, allow me!"

"Certainly, miss; I am not of steel."  He added a sigh which had as
much archness in it as a sigh could possess without losing its nature
altogether.  "I am thankful for beauty, even when 'tis thrown to me
like a bone to a dog.  These moments will be over too soon!"

She closed her lips in a determined silence.

Bathsheba was revolving in her mind whether by a bold and desperate
rush she could free herself at the risk of leaving her skirt bodily
behind her.  The thought was too dreadful.  The dress--which she had
put on to appear stately at the supper--was the head and front of her
wardrobe; not another in her stock became her so well.  What woman
in Bathsheba's position, not naturally timid, and within call of her
retainers, would have bought escape from a dashing soldier at so dear
a price?

"All in good time; it will soon be done, I perceive," said her cool
friend.

"This trifling provokes, and--and--"

"Not too cruel!"

"--Insults me!"

"It is done in order that I may have the pleasure of apologizing to
so charming a woman, which I straightway do most humbly, madam," he
said, bowing low.

Bathsheba really knew not what to say.

"I've seen a good many women in my time," continued the young man in
a murmur, and more thoughtfully than hitherto, critically regarding
her bent head at the same time; "but I've never seen a woman so
beautiful as you.  Take it or leave it--be offended or like it--I
don't care."

"Who are you, then, who can so well afford to despise opinion?"

"No stranger.  Sergeant Troy.  I am staying in this place.--There!
it is undone at last, you see.  Your light fingers were more eager
than mine.  I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there's no
untying!"

This was worse and worse.  She started up, and so did he.  How to
decently get away from him--that was her difficulty now.  She sidled
off inch by inch, the lantern in her hand, till she could see the
redness of his coat no longer.

"Ah, Beauty; good-bye!" he said.

She made no reply, and, reaching a distance of twenty or thirty
yards, turned about, and ran indoors.

Liddy had just retired to rest.  In ascending to her own chamber,
Bathsheba opened the girl's door an inch or two, and, panting, said--

"Liddy, is any soldier staying in the village--sergeant somebody--
rather gentlemanly for a sergeant, and good looking--a red coat with
blue facings?"

"No, miss ... No, I say; but really it might be Sergeant Troy home on
furlough, though I have not seen him.  He was here once in that way
when the regiment was at Casterbridge."

"Yes; that's the name.  Had he a moustache--no whiskers or beard?"

"He had."

"What kind of a person is he?"

"Oh! miss--I blush to name it--a gay man!  But I know him to be very
quick and trim, who might have made his thousands, like a squire.
Such a clever young dandy as he is!  He's a doctor's son by name,
which is a great deal; and he's an earl's son by nature!"

"Which is a great deal more.  Fancy!  Is it true?"

"Yes.  And, he was brought up so well, and sent to Casterbridge
Grammar School for years and years.  Learnt all languages while he
was there; and it was said he got on so far that he could take down
Chinese in shorthand; but that I don't answer for, as it was only
reported.  However, he wasted his gifted lot, and listed a soldier;
but even then he rose to be a sergeant without trying at all.  Ah!
such a blessing it is to be high-born; nobility of blood will shine
out even in the ranks and files.  And is he really come home, miss?"

"I believe so.  Good-night, Liddy."

After all, how could a cheerful wearer of skirts be permanently
offended with the man?  There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba
will put up with a great deal of unconventional behaviour.  When they
want to be praised, which is often, when they want to be mastered,
which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.
Just now the first feeling was in the ascendant with Bathsheba,
with a dash of the second.  Moreover, by chance or by devilry, the
ministrant was antecedently made interesting by being a handsome
stranger who had evidently seen better days.

So she could not clearly decide whether it was her opinion that he
had insulted her or not.

"Was ever anything so odd!" she at last exclaimed to herself, in her
own room.  "And was ever anything so meanly done as what I did--to
skulk away like that from a man who was only civil and kind!" Clearly
she did not think his barefaced praise of her person an insult now.

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her
she was beautiful.

THE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED

Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as
an exceptional being.

He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations
a superfluity.  Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was
before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present.  His outlook
upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that
projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which
makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word
for circumspection, was foreign to Troy.  With him the past was
yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.

On this account he might, in certain lights, have been regarded as
one of the most fortunate of his order.  For it may be argued with
great plausibility that reminiscence is less an endowment than a
disease, and that expectation in its only comfortable form--that of
absolute faith--is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form
of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve,
curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain.

Sergeant Troy, being entirely innocent of the practice of
expectation, was never disappointed.  To set against this negative
gain there may have been some positive losses from a certain
narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed.  But
limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser
therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts
plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it,
whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer.  It is not a denial
of anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never
enjoyed he did not miss; but, being fully conscious that what sober
people missed he enjoyed, his capacity, though really less, seemed
greater than theirs.

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like
a Cretan--a system of ethics above all others calculated to win
popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society; and
the possibility of the favour gained being transitory had reference
only to the future.

He never passed the line which divides the spruce vices from the
ugly; and hence, though his morals had hardly been applauded,
disapproval of them had frequently been tempered with a smile.  This
treatment had led to his becoming a sort of regrater of other men's
gallantries, to his own aggrandizement as a Corinthian, rather than
to the moral profit of his hearers.

His reason and his propensities had seldom any reciprocating
influence, having separated by mutual consent long ago: thence it
sometimes happened that, while his intentions were as honourable as
could be wished, any particular deed formed a dark background which
threw them into fine relief.  The sergeant's vicious phases being the
offspring of impulse, and his virtuous phases of cool meditation, the
latter had a modest tendency to be oftener heard of than seen.

Troy was full of activity, but his activities were less of a
locomotive than a vegetative nature; and, never being based upon
any original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercised
on whatever object chance might place in their way.  Hence, whilst
he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was
spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability
to guide incipient effort.  He had a quick comprehension and
considerable force of character; but, being without the power to
combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities
whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself
in useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension.

He was a fairly well-educated man for one of middle class--
exceptionally well educated for a common soldier.  He spoke fluently
and unceasingly.  He could in this way be one thing and seem another:
for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the
husband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.

The wondrous power of flattery in _passados_ at woman is a perception
so universal as to be remarked upon by many people almost as
automatically as they repeat a proverb, or say that they are
Christians and the like, without thinking much of the enormous
corollaries which spring from the proposition.  Still less is it
acted upon for the good of the complemental being alluded to.
With the majority such an opinion is shelved with all those trite
aphorisms which require some catastrophe to bring their tremendous
meanings thoroughly home.  When expressed with some amount of
reflectiveness it seems co-ordinate with a belief that this flattery
must be reasonable to be effective.  It is to the credit of men that
few attempt to settle the question by experiment, and it is for
their happiness, perhaps, that accident has never settled it for
them.  Nevertheless, that a male dissembler who by deluging her with
untenable fictions charms the female wisely, may acquire powers
reaching to the extremity of perdition, is a truth taught to many by
unsought and wringing occurrences.  And some profess to have attained
to the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily
continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect.
Sergeant Troy was one.

He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind
the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing.  There was
no third method.  "Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." he
would say.

This person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed his
arrival there.  A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feeling
a nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence,
approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the
haymakers.  They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and
flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who
wore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon
their shoulders.  Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forward
meadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to
which Jan made no attempt to keep time with his.  In the first mead
they were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and
windrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon.

From behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on
loading unconcernedly with the rest.  It was the gallant sergeant,
who had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that
he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this
voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.

As soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking his
pitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came
forward.  Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and
adjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.

SCENE ON THE VERGE OF THE HAY-MEAD

"Ah, Miss Everdene!" said the sergeant, touching his diminutive cap.
"Little did I think it was you I was speaking to the other night.
And yet, if I had reflected, the 'Queen of the Corn-market' (truth is
truth at any hour of the day or night, and I heard you so named in
Casterbridge yesterday), the 'Queen of the Corn-market.' I say, could
be no other woman.  I step across now to beg your forgiveness a
thousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself
too strongly for a stranger.  To be sure I am no stranger to the
place--I am Sergeant Troy, as I told you, and I have assisted your
uncle in these fields no end of times when I was a lad.  I have been
doing the same for you to-day."

"I suppose I must thank you for that, Sergeant Troy," said the Queen
of the Corn-market, in an indifferently grateful tone.

The sergeant looked hurt and sad.  "Indeed you must not, Miss
Everdene," he said.  "Why could you think such a thing necessary?"

"I am glad it is not."

"Why? if I may ask without offence."

"Because I don't much want to thank you for anything."

"I am afraid I have made a hole with my tongue that my heart will
never mend.  O these intolerable times: that ill-luck should follow
a man for honestly telling a woman she is beautiful!  'Twas the most
I said--you must own that; and the least I could say--that I own
myself."

"There is some talk I could do without more easily than money."

"Indeed.  That remark is a sort of digression."

"No.  It means that I would rather have your room than your company."

"And I would rather have curses from you than kisses from any other
woman; so I'll stay here."

Bathsheba was absolutely speechless.  And yet she could not help
feeling that the assistance he was rendering forbade a harsh repulse.

"Well," continued Troy, "I suppose there is a praise which is
rudeness, and that may be mine.  At the same time there is a
treatment which is injustice, and that may be yours.  Because a plain
blunt man, who has never been taught concealment, speaks out his mind
without exactly intending it, he's to be snapped off like the son of
a sinner."

"Indeed there's no such case between us," she said, turning away.  "I
don't allow strangers to be bold and impudent--even in praise of me."

"Ah--it is not the fact but the method which offends you," he said,
carelessly.  "But I have the sad satisfaction of knowing that my
words, whether pleasing or offensive, are unmistakably true.  Would
you have had me look at you, and tell my acquaintance that you are
quite a common-place woman, to save you the embarrassment of being
stared at if they come near you?  Not I.  I couldn't tell any such
ridiculous lie about a beauty to encourage a single woman in England
in too excessive a modesty."

"It is all pretence--what you are saying!" exclaimed Bathsheba,
laughing in spite of herself at the sly method.  "You have a rare
invention, Sergeant Troy.  Why couldn't you have passed by me that
night, and said nothing?--that was all I meant to reproach you for."

"Because I wasn't going to.  Half the pleasure of a feeling lies in
being able to express it on the spur of the moment, and I let out
mine.  It would have been just the same if you had been the reverse
person--ugly and old--I should have exclaimed about it in the same
way."

"How long is it since you have been so afflicted with strong feeling,
then?"

"Oh, ever since I was big enough to know loveliness from deformity."

"'Tis to be hoped your sense of the difference you speak of doesn't
stop at faces, but extends to morals as well."

"I won't speak of morals or religion--my own or anybody else's.
Though perhaps I should have been a very good Christian if you pretty
women hadn't made me an idolater."

Bathsheba moved on to hide the irrepressible dimplings of merriment.
Troy followed, whirling his crop.

"But--Miss Everdene--you do forgive me?"

"Hardly."

"Why?"

"You say such things."

"I said you were beautiful, and I'll say so still; for, by G---- so you
are!  The most beautiful ever I saw, or may I fall dead this instant!
Why, upon my ----"

"Don't--don't!  I won't listen to you--you are so profane!" she said,
in a restless state between distress at hearing him and a _penchant_
to hear more.

"I again say you are a most fascinating woman.  There's nothing
remarkable in my saying so, is there?  I'm sure the fact is evident
enough.  Miss Everdene, my opinion may be too forcibly let out
to please you, and, for the matter of that, too insignificant to
convince you, but surely it is honest, and why can't it be excused?"

"Because it--it isn't a correct one," she femininely murmured.

"Oh, fie--fie!  Am I any worse for breaking the third of that
Terrible Ten than you for breaking the ninth?"

"Well, it doesn't seem QUITE true to me that I am fascinating," she
replied evasively.

"Not so to you: then I say with all respect that, if so, it is owing
to your modesty, Miss Everdene.  But surely you must have been told
by everybody of what everybody notices?  And you should take their
words for it."

"They don't say so exactly."

"Oh yes, they must!"

"Well, I mean to my face, as you do," she went on, allowing herself
to be further lured into a conversation that intention had rigorously
forbidden.

"But you know they think so?"

"No--that is--I certainly have heard Liddy say they do, but--"  She
paused.

Capitulation--that was the purport of the simple reply, guarded as it
was--capitulation, unknown to herself.  Never did a fragile tailless
sentence convey a more perfect meaning.  The careless sergeant smiled
within himself, and probably too the devil smiled from a loop-hole in
Tophet, for the moment was the turning-point of a career.  Her tone
and mien signified beyond mistake that the seed which was to lift the
foundation had taken root in the chink: the remainder was a mere
question of time and natural changes.

"There the truth comes out!" said the soldier, in reply.  "Never tell
me that a young lady can live in a buzz of admiration without knowing
something about it.  Ah, well, Miss Everdene, you are--pardon my
blunt way--you are rather an injury to our race than otherwise."

"How--indeed?" she said, opening her eyes.

"Oh, it is true enough.  I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb
(an old country saying, not of much account, but it will do for a
rough soldier), and so I will speak my mind, regardless of your
pleasure, and without hoping or intending to get your pardon.  Why,
Miss Everdene, it is in this manner that your good looks may do more
harm than good in the world."  The sergeant looked down the mead in
critical abstraction.  "Probably some one man on an average falls in
love with each ordinary woman.  She can marry him: he is content,
and leads a useful life.  Such women as you a hundred men always
covet--your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing
fancy for you--you can only marry one of that many.  Out of these
say twenty will endeavour to drown the bitterness of despised love
in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or
attempt to make a mark in he world, because they have no ambition
apart from their attachment to you; twenty more--the susceptible
person myself possibly among them--will be always draggling after
you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things.
Men are such constant fools!  The rest may try to get over their
passion with more or less success.  But all these men will be
saddened.  And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine
women they might have married are saddened with them.  There's my
tale.  That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss
Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race."

The handsome sergeant's features were during this speech as rigid and
stern as John Knox's in addressing his gay young queen.

Seeing she made no reply, he said, "Do you read French?"

"No; I began, but when I got to the verbs, father died," she said
simply.

"I do--when I have an opportunity, which latterly has not been often
(my mother was a Parisienne)--and there's a proverb they have,
_Qui aime bien, chatie bien_--'He chastens who loves well.'  Do you
understand me?"

"Ah!" she replied, and there was even a little tremulousness in the
usually cool girl's voice; "if you can only fight half as winningly
as you can talk, you are able to make a pleasure of a bayonet wound!"
And then poor Bathsheba instantly perceived her slip in making this
admission: in hastily trying to retrieve it, she went from bad to
worse.  "Don't, however, suppose that _I_ derive any pleasure from
what you tell me."

"I know you do not--I know it perfectly," said Troy, with much hearty
conviction on the exterior of his face: and altering the expression
to moodiness; "when a dozen men are ready to speak tenderly to you,
and give the admiration you deserve without adding the warning you
need, it stands to reason that my poor rough-and-ready mixture of
praise and blame cannot convey much pleasure.  Fool as I may be, I
am not so conceited as to suppose that!"

"I think you--are conceited, nevertheless," said Bathsheba, looking
askance at a reed she was fitfully pulling with one hand, having
lately grown feverish under the soldier's system of procedure--not
because the nature of his cajolery was entirely unperceived, but
because its vigour was overwhelming.

"I would not own it to anybody else--nor do I exactly to you.  Still,
there might have been some self-conceit in my foolish supposition
the other night.  I knew that what I said in admiration might be
an opinion too often forced upon you to give any pleasure, but I
certainly did think that the kindness of your nature might prevent
you judging an uncontrolled tongue harshly--which you have done--and
thinking badly of me and wounding me this morning, when I am working
hard to save your hay."

"Well, you need not think more of that: perhaps you did not mean to
be rude to me by speaking out your mind: indeed, I believe you did
not," said the shrewd woman, in painfully innocent earnest.  "And I
thank you for giving help here.  But--but mind you don't speak to me
again in that way, or in any other, unless I speak to you."

"Oh, Miss Bathsheba!  That is too hard!"

"No, it isn't.  Why is it?"

"You will never speak to me; for I shall not be here long.  I am soon
going back again to the miserable monotony of drill--and perhaps
our regiment will be ordered out soon.  And yet you take away the
one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life
of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked
characteristic."

"When are you going from here?" she asked, with some interest.

"In a month."

"But how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?"

"Can you ask Miss Everdene--knowing as you do--what my offence is
based on?"

"If you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I
don't mind doing it," she uncertainly and doubtingly answered.  "But
you can't really care for a word from me? you only say so--I think
you only say so."

"That's unjust--but I won't repeat the remark.  I am too gratified to
get such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone.
I DO, Miss Everdene, care for it.  You may think a man foolish to
want a mere word--just a good morning.  Perhaps he is--I don't know.
But you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman
yourself."

"Well."

"Then you know nothing of what such an experience is like--and Heaven
forbid that you ever should!"

"Nonsense, flatterer!  What is it like?  I am interested in knowing."

"Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in
any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without
torture."

"Ah, sergeant, it won't do--you are pretending!" she said, shaking
her head. "Your words are too dashing to be true."

"I am not, upon the honour of a soldier."

"But WHY is it so?--Of course I ask for mere pastime."

"Because you are so distracting--and I am so distracted."

"You look like it."

"I am indeed."

"Why, you only saw me the other night!"

"That makes no difference.  The lightning works instantaneously.  I
loved you then, at once--as I do now."

Bathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as
she liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his
eyes.

"You cannot and you don't," she said demurely.  "There is no such
sudden feeling in people.  I won't listen to you any longer.  Hear
me, I wish I knew what o'clock it is--I am going--I have wasted too
much time here already!"

The sergeant looked at his watch and told her.  "What, haven't you a
watch, miss?" he inquired.

"I have not just at present--I am about to get a new one."

"No.  You shall be given one.  Yes--you shall.  A gift, Miss
Everdene--a gift."

And before she knew what the young man was intending, a heavy gold
watch was in her hand.

"It is an unusually good one for a man like me to possess," he
quietly said.  "That watch has a history.  Press the spring and open
the back."

She did so.

"What do you see?"

"A crest and a motto."

"A coronet with five points, and beneath, _Cedit amor rebus_--'Love
yields to circumstance.' It's the motto of the Earls of Severn.
That watch belonged to the last lord, and was given to my mother's
husband, a medical man, for his use till I came of age, when it was
to be given to me.  It was all the fortune that ever I inherited.
That watch has regulated imperial interests in its time--the stately
ceremonial, the courtly assignation, pompous travels, and lordly
sleeps.  Now it is yours."

"But, Sergeant Troy, I cannot take this--I cannot!" she exclaimed,
with round-eyed wonder.  "A gold watch!  What are you doing?  Don't
be such a dissembler!"

The sergeant retreated to avoid receiving back his gift, which she
held out persistently towards him.  Bathsheba followed as he retired.

"Keep it--do, Miss Everdene--keep it!" said the erratic child of
impulse.  "The fact of your possessing it makes it worth ten times
as much to me.  A more plebeian one will answer my purpose just
as well, and the pleasure of knowing whose heart my old one beats
against--well, I won't speak of that.  It is in far worthier hands
than ever it has been in before."

"But indeed I can't have it!" she said, in a perfect simmer of
distress.  "Oh, how can you do such a thing; that is if you really
mean it!  Give me your dead father's watch, and such a valuable one!
You should not be so reckless, indeed, Sergeant Troy!"

"I loved my father: good; but better, I love you more.  That's how I
can do it," said the sergeant, with an intonation of such exquisite
fidelity to nature that it was evidently not all acted now.  Her
beauty, which, whilst it had been quiescent, he had praised in jest,
had in its animated phases moved him to earnest; and though his
seriousness was less than she imagined, it was probably more than he
imagined himself.

Bathsheba was brimming with agitated bewilderment, and she said, in
half-suspicious accents of feeling, "Can it be!  Oh, how can it be,
that you care for me, and so suddenly!  You have seen so little
of me: I may not be really so--so nice-looking as I seem to you.
Please, do take it; Oh, do!  I cannot and will not have it.  Believe
me, your generosity is too great.  I have never done you a single
kindness, and why should you be so kind to me?"

A factitious reply had been again upon his lips, but it was again
suspended, and he looked at her with an arrested eye.  The truth was,
that as she now stood--excited, wild, and honest as the day--her
alluring beauty bore out so fully the epithets he had bestowed upon
it that he was quite startled at his temerity in advancing them as
false.  He said mechanically, "Ah, why?" and continued to look at
her.

"And my workfolk see me following you about the field, and are
wondering.  Oh, this is dreadful!" she went on, unconscious of the
transmutation she was effecting.

"I did not quite mean you to accept it at first, for it was my one
poor patent of nobility," he broke out, bluntly; "but, upon my soul,
I wish you would now.  Without any shamming, come!  Don't deny me the
happiness of wearing it for my sake?  But you are too lovely even to
care to be kind as others are."

"No, no; don't say so!  I have reasons for reserve which I cannot
explain."

"Let it be, then, let it be," he said, receiving back the watch at
last; "I must be leaving you now.  And will you speak to me for these
few weeks of my stay?"

"Indeed I will.  Yet, I don't know if I will!  Oh, why did you come
and disturb me so!"

"Perhaps in setting a gin, I have caught myself.  Such things have
happened.  Well, will you let me work in your fields?" he coaxed.

"Yes, I suppose so; if it is any pleasure to you."

"Miss Everdene, I thank you."

"No, no."

"Good-bye!"

The sergeant brought his hand to the cap on the slope of his head,
saluted, and returned to the distant group of haymakers.

Bathsheba could not face the haymakers now.  Her heart erratically
flitting hither and thither from perplexed excitement, hot, and
almost tearful, she retreated homeward, murmuring, "Oh, what have I
done!  What does it mean!  I wish I knew how much of it was true!"

HIVING THE BEES

The Weatherbury bees were late in their swarming this year. It was in
the latter part of June, and the day after the interview with Troy in
the hayfield, that Bathsheba was standing in her garden, watching a
swarm in the air and guessing their probable settling place.  Not
only were they late this year, but unruly.  Sometimes throughout a
whole season all the swarms would alight on the lowest attainable
bough--such as part of a currant-bush or espalier apple-tree; next
year they would, with just the same unanimity, make straight off to
the uppermost member of some tall, gaunt costard, or quarrenden,
and there defy all invaders who did not come armed with ladders and
staves to take them.

This was the case at present.  Bathsheba's eyes, shaded by one hand,
were following the ascending multitude against the unexplorable
stretch of blue till they ultimately halted by one of the unwieldy
trees spoken of.  A process somewhat analogous to that of alleged
formations of the universe, time and times ago, was observable.  The
bustling swarm had swept the sky in a scattered and uniform haze,
which now thickened to a nebulous centre: this glided on to a bough
and grew still denser, till it formed a solid black spot upon the
light.

The men and women being all busily engaged in saving the hay--even
Liddy had left the house for the purpose of lending a hand--Bathsheba
resolved to hive the bees herself, if possible.  She had dressed the
hive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made
herself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and
large gauze veil--once green but now faded to snuff colour--and
ascended a dozen rungs of the ladder.  At once she heard, not ten
yards off, a voice that was beginning to have a strange power in
agitating her.

"Miss Everdene, let me assist you; you should not attempt such a
thing alone."

Troy was just opening the garden gate.

Bathsheba flung down the brush, crook, and empty hive, pulled the
skirt of her dress tightly round her ankles in a tremendous flurry,
and as well as she could slid down the ladder.  By the time she
reached the bottom Troy was there also, and he stooped to pick up
the hive.

"How fortunate I am to have dropped in at this moment!" exclaimed the
sergeant.

She found her voice in a minute.  "What! and will you shake them in
for me?" she asked, in what, for a defiant girl, was a faltering way;
though, for a timid girl, it would have seemed a brave way enough.

"Will I!" said Troy.  "Why, of course I will.  How blooming you are
to-day!"  Troy flung down his cane and put his foot on the ladder to
ascend.

"But you must have on the veil and gloves, or you'll be stung
fearfully!"

"Ah, yes.  I must put on the veil and gloves.  Will you kindly show
me how to fix them properly?"

"And you must have the broad-brimmed hat, too, for your cap has no
brim to keep the veil off, and they'd reach your face."

"The broad-brimmed hat, too, by all means."

So a whimsical fate ordered that her hat should be taken off--veil
and all attached--and placed upon his head, Troy tossing his own into
a gooseberry bush.  Then the veil had to be tied at its lower edge
round his collar and the gloves put on him.

He looked such an extraordinary object in this guise that, flurried
as she was, she could not avoid laughing outright. It was the removal
of yet another stake from the palisade of cold manners which had kept
him off.

Bathsheba looked on from the ground whilst he was busy sweeping and
shaking the bees from the tree, holding up the hive with the other
hand for them to fall into.  She made use of an unobserved minute
whilst his attention was absorbed in the operation to arrange her
plumes a little.  He came down holding the hive at arm's length,
behind which trailed a cloud of bees.

"Upon my life," said Troy, through the veil, "holding up this hive
makes one's arm ache worse than a week of sword-exercise." When the
manoeuvre was complete he approached her.  "Would you be good enough
to untie me and let me out? I am nearly stifled inside this silk
cage."

To hide her embarrassment during the unwonted process of untying the
string about his neck, she said:--

"I have never seen that you spoke of."

"What?"

"The sword-exercise."

"Ah! would you like to?" said Troy.

Bathsheba hesitated.  She had heard wondrous reports from time to
time by dwellers in Weatherbury, who had by chance sojourned awhile
in Casterbridge, near the barracks, of this strange and glorious
performance, the sword-exercise.  Men and boys who had peeped through
chinks or over walls into the barrack-yard returned with accounts of
its being the most flashing affair conceivable; accoutrements and
weapons glistening like stars--here, there, around--yet all by rule
and compass.  So she said mildly what she felt strongly.

"Yes; I should like to see it very much."

"And so you shall; you shall see me go through it."

"No!  How?"

"Let me consider."

"Not with a walking-stick--I don't care to see that.  It must be a
real sword."

"Yes, I know; and I have no sword here; but I think I could get one
by the evening.  Now, will you do this?"

Troy bent over her and murmured some suggestion in a low voice.

"Oh no, indeed!" said Bathsheba, blushing. "Thank you very much, but
I couldn't on any account."

"Surely you might?  Nobody would know."

She shook her head, but with a weakened negation.  "If I were to,"
she said, "I must bring Liddy too.  Might I not?"

Troy looked far away.  "I don't see why you want to bring her," he
said coldly.

An unconscious look of assent in Bathsheba's eyes betrayed that
something more than his coldness had made her also feel that Liddy
would be superfluous in the suggested scene.  She had felt it, even
whilst making the proposal.

"Well, I won't bring Liddy--and I'll come.  But only for a very short
time," she added; "a very short time."

"It will not take five minutes," said Troy.

In June, it is time for the sheep shearing. While shearing in the barn, Gabriel notices that Boldwood has come to speak with Bathsheba. He is distracted by speculating about the nature of their conversation and wounds one of the sheep, leading Bathsheba to rebuke him. After Boldwood and Bathsheba ride off together, the other farmworkers speculate that the two of them will soon marry. After the shearing is finished, Bathsheba and her workers celebrate with a traditional shearing-supper. At the end of supper, when Boldwood and Bathsheba are alone together, she tells him that she is willing to consider marrying him but wants more time to think about it. She tells him that she expects she will be able to give him a definitive answer by harvest time. That night, Bathsheba follows her nightly routine of walking around the property and inspecting it before going to bed. As she passes through the fir plantation, a man in military dress walks up behind her, and her skirt gets accidentally hooked onto the spur of his boot. He tries to free her and during the time spent untangling the knot, he identifies himself as Sergeant Troy. Troy also compliments Bathsheba's beauty and flirts with her, making her uncomfortable. When she is freed, she hurries home and asks Liddy if she knows anything about this man. Liddy explains that Troy is well-educated and from a good family, and that he also has a reputation as a flirt and a ladies' man. A week after the shearing, Bathsheba goes to supervise her workers as they load hay and finds that Troy has come to help them. He approaches her and the two flirt with each other, although Bathsheba is somewhat guarded and skeptical. She is shocked when Troy impulsively gives her a watch that belonged to his father. The next day, he comes to the farm again and helps her with her beehive. She mentions that she would like to see him perform his sword exercises and they make a plan to meet that evening in secret. When they meet, Troy dazzles her with his skill as a swordsman and his bold charm. He kisses her before he leaves, leaving Bathsheba overwhelmed and confused by her feelings.

Bathsheba's situation was already complicated as she tried to come to a decision about Boldwood's proposal, but the encounter with Troy throws another suitor into the mix. With both Gabriel and Boldwood, Bathsheba could be detached and rational about what was in her best interest. With Troy, it is immediately clear that she is going to be led by her emotions and desires. The scene in which they meet is rich with symbolism: as a woman walking alone at night, Bathsheba is to some extent in a dangerous situation, and the sudden presence of a man walking near her has the initial possibility of being threatening. When her dress catches on his spur, she is symbolically ensnared or captured by him. Paradoxically, Bathsheba seems to find this vulnerable and relatively helpless situation to be exciting and arousing. The scene is one of the rare moments in the novel where she embodies a more traditionally feminine role of being dependent on a man to resolve a situation for her. The idea that this dependency might have destructive consequences becomes clear when she pleads with Troy to rip her dress in order to set her free: this moment foreshadows the future in which she will endure suffering and damage in order to try and escape from her unhappy marriage. In her subsequent interactions with Troy, Bathsheba wavers back and forth between being somewhat conservative and traditional, and quite reckless in her behavior. She is curious about his reputation, which she reveals by seeking information from Liddy. In a world where reputation and an honorable public identity were major parts of what made someone worthy of respect, Bathsheba is anxious to find out how Troy is perceived. She is also conservative enough to be shocked and somewhat distressed by Troy giving away his father's watch. In a more traditional worldview, an expensive item that is also a family heirloom would not be discarded lightly. However, by agreeing to meet Troy alone in the woods at night, Bathsheba takes a significant risk. This action reflects the precarious freedom of her independent and autonomous position; because she is effectively the head of her own household, Bathsheba has no one to supervise or try and control her behavior. This means that she can do things it would be difficult for other young women of her social position to get away with. Not only does she sneak off alone with him, Bathsheba allows Troy relatively intimate access to her body as he practices his sword exercises with her as a target. There is a literal danger in terms of the injury she could sustain if his sword were to slip, but there is also the symbolic danger of what this sexually charged flirtation could lead to. Troy's sword takes on a clear phallic symbolism in this scene; it is a source of danger for Bathsheba, but she is entranced and seduced by it.