feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/Far from the Madding Crowd/section_1_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: Far from the Madding Crowd.chapters 5-13
feat_summary_id: chapters 5-13
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 5-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210108004047/https://www.gradesaver.com/far-from-the-madding-crowd/study-guide/summary-chapters-5-13", "summary": "Shortly after he proposes, Gabriel learns that Bathsheba has moved away to the town of Weatherbury. One night, Gabriel awakens to the sound of the sheep bells, indicating that the herd is running quickly. He gets up and finds that the 200 sheep who were still pregnant have been driven off the edge of a cliff by his young and overeager sheepdog. This loss is a financial catastrophe for Gabriel, and he has to sell everything he owns in order to pay off his remaining debts. The story resumes in February, in the town of Casterbridge, where a gathering is taking place for men looking for work to meet with prospective employers. Gabriel is there, eager to find work as either a bailiff or shepherd, but no one seems to want to hire him. He learns that another hiring fair is taking place the following day at Shottsford and decides to walk there, a journey which will take him through the town of Weatherbury. Along the way, he becomes tired and climbs into a wagon parked by the road in order to rest, only to awaken and find that the wagon is in motion. After he discreetly slips out of the wagon, Gabriel notices that some crops of straw are on fire at a nearby farm and that the fire is threatening to spread. Gabriel joins in to help the farmworkers control the fire, taking charge of the situation and providing effective leadership. Two women, one of whom owns the farm, observe Gabriel's hard work and send a message to him thanking him. Hoping to take advantage of this gratitude, Gabriel goes to ask if the farmer would like to hire him as a shepherd, only to realize that the owner of the farm is Bathsheba, who has inherited it from her uncle. The other farmworkers encourage her to hire Gabriel, and she agrees. As Gabriel makes his way towards accommodations for the night, he encounters a young woman walking alone. She gives him directions, and then asks that he not tell anyone he has seen her. Concerned, Gabriel gives her a small sum of money and then continues on his way. He arrives at the pub where the other farmworkers have gathered and is greeted warmly since some of the older men used to know his father and grandfather. After Gabriel has left for his room, one of the farmworkers comes hurrying in to break the news that the man working as the bailiff at Bathsheba's farm has been caught stealing and was fired from his job. What's more, Fanny Robbins, a young servant, cannot be found, and given that she has seemed depressed recently, her disappearance is alarming to Bathsheba. Several of the farmworkers go back to the farmhouse to speak with Bathsheba. She instructs them to look for Fanny the next day, including asking the soldiers at Casterbridge, since there are rumors that one of them was wooing Fanny. The next morning, Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are busy with household chores when they are surprised by the arrival of Mr. Boldwood, a prosperous farmer. Bathsheba declines to see him, since she is not dressed appropriately and Boldwood explains to the servant that he has come to ask whether any information had surfaced about Fanny's disappearance. After Boldwood departs, the other female servants explain that he is well-respected but also the subject of speculation since he has never shown any interest in getting married. After she has gotten ready, Bathsheba meets with the farmworkers to distribute their wages. She announces that she is not going to hire a new bailiff and instead plans to manage the farm herself. She also asks whether anyone has learned any news about Fanny and is informed that the regiment of soldiers previously stationed at Casterbridge has moved on to the town of Melchester, and it is assumed that Fanny has gone there as well, following her sweetheart. Bathsheba's hands-on approach is furthered signaled when she goes to the corn market to display the products of her farm, and negotiate prices with potential buyers. At the market, she is the subject of much male attention, but is surprised to notice one handsome man who does not seem intrigued by her at all. After questioning Liddy, she learns that this man is the same Farmer Boldwood who had previously called upon her. On the day before Valentine's, Liddy and Bathsheba are idly passing time and the conversation again turns to Boldwood, who had not taken any notice of Bathsheba during church services. Bathsheba mentions a valentine she is going to send to a young boy who works on the farm, and Liddy playfully suggests sending it to Boldwood instead. Bathsheba is intrigued by the idea, since she is slightly annoyed that Boldwood has shown no interest in her. They use the equivalent of a coin toss to determine the plan, and then send the anonymous valentine to Boldwood. Meanwhile, in Melchester, Fanny throws a stone at the windows of the soldier's barracks to get the attention of her lover, Sergeant Frank Troy. Troy is surprised to see her, but Fanny is anxious to hear details about when their planned marriage will take place. Frank assures her that he does plan to marry her, but that the logistical details will cause a delay. He promises to come and visit Fanny in her new lodgings as soon as possible.", "analysis": "Whereas Gabriel begins the novel at a hopeful moment with bright prospects for the future, his fortune is abruptly reversed with the loss of his flock. The loss is all the more glaring because Gabriel is such a careful and conscientious man; despite all of his efforts, everything can still be swept away. Hardy had a profound respect for nature, and the way in which nature can be both bountiful and destructive. At a moment literally ripe with promise, when the ewes are pregnant and therefore on the verge of doubling Gabriel's flock, the scene becomes one of death and grotesque destruction rather than birth and regeneration. Perhaps because Gabriel is a man attuned to the cycles of nature and the inevitable balance between growth and loss, or perhaps because he has previous experience as a humble laborer, he accepts his loss stoically. When he is at the hiring fair, Gabriel is open to accepting work as either a bailiff or a shepherd, even though the two roles were significantly different in social status and pay. The difficulty Gabriel finds in locating work reflects one of the consequences of his attempt at social mobility. He seems underqualified to work as a bailiff on one hand, but now overqualified to go back to being a shepherd since he has experience of working his own farm. However, Gabriel's innate integrity and desire to do the right thing helps to set him on the path to restoring his career. He has no obligation to help with putting out the fire, but he naturally shows leadership and good judgement, and is rewarded by quickly earning the trust of the other workers. The fact that the other men take warmly to Gabriel because of the way he behaves during the fire, and because he has family ties to the area, shows how reputations were established in a pre-industrial era. While Gabriel is quickly accepted into the Everdene farm and the surrounding community, Bathsheba faces more serious challenges. It was somewhat unconventional for a woman to own a substantial property at this time, and still more unusual for her to actively manage it herself. A farm like Bathsheba's involved a substantial and time-consuming amount of effort to be run successfully, and, as quickly becomes evident, requires courage, keen intelligence, and business savvy. Bathsheba shows the same independent spirit that distinguished her when she was helping her aunt, even though the public attention she attracts clearly makes her somewhat uncomfortable. While Bathsheba's new authority and status gives her new freedoms, it also seems to make her reckless. She doesn't have any companions or advisors, and seems to depend on a friendship with Liddy to keep her from boredom. Bathsheba's decision to send the valentine to Boldwood is related to the new autonomy and power she wields once taking on the traditionally masculine role of farmer and manager. As Karin Koehler writes, \"She feels compelled to challenge Boldwood's emphatically masculine sense of self, and, prompted by Liddy's suggestion, intuits that her aim will be accomplished most effectively by a deliberate, aggressive subversion of sexual and gender norms\" . The two impulsive young women egg each other on, leading to the decision to send the valentine to Boldwood. While the prank would be somewhat expected from a maidservant like Liddy, as a landowner and business person, Bathsheba should act with more discretion and foresight. Particularly as a woman, her good reputation is paramount, and she risks jeopardizing it for a childish, lighthearted prank. Although on a very different scale, Bathsheba's impulsive action is paralleled by the risky choices Fanny makes as she follows her heart. As a working-class young woman who doesn't seem to have any family members, she is in a perilous position and can easily be manipulated by an unscrupulous man. Soldiers like Troy had a reputation for womanizing, facilitated by the fact that when the troops moved on, it was easy to discard any women they had pursued affairs with. Troy's vague and ambiguous statements about plans for his marriage hint that he may not in fact be committed to legitimizing his relationship with Fanny."}
text: 
  
  DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA--A PASTORAL TRAGEDY
  
  
  The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdene
  had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might
  have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the
  renunciation the less absolute its character.
  
  It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting
  out of love as there is for getting in.  Some people look upon
  marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.
  Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by
  Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain
  humours, is apt to idealize the removed object with others--notably
  those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep
  and long.  Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and
  felt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a
  finer flame now that she was gone--that was all.
  
  His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the
  failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's
  movements was done indirectly.  It appeared that she had gone to
  a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in
  what capacity--whether as a visitor, or permanently, he could not
  discover.
  
  Gabriel had two dogs.  George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped
  nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked
  in random splotches approximating in colour to white and slaty
  grey; but the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched
  and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a
  reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like
  the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures.  In
  substance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep
  seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and
  staple.
  
  This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals
  and dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact
  degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all
  descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood.
  Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference
  between such exclamations as "Come in!" and "D---- ye, come in!" that
  he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the ewes'
  tails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep crook
  was to be escaped.  Though old, he was clever and trustworthy still.
  
  The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image
  of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and
  George.  He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow
  on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further
  than the rudiments as yet--still finding an insuperable difficulty
  in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too
  well.  So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog (he had
  no name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any
  pleasant interjection), that if sent behind the flock to help them
  on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the
  whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded
  when to stop by the example of old George.
  
  Thus much for the dogs.  On the further side of Norcombe Hill was
  a chalk-pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations, and
  spread over adjacent farms.  Two hedges converged upon it in the form
  of a V, but without quite meeting.  The narrow opening left, which
  was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough
  railing.
  
  One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there
  would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he
  called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the
  outhouse till next morning.  Only one responded--old George; the
  other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden.
  Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill
  eating a dead lamb (a kind of meat he usually kept from them, except
  when other food ran short), and concluding that the young one had
  not finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which
  latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays.
  
  It was a still, moist night.  Just before dawn he was assisted in
  waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music.  To the
  shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock
  to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by
  ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle
  twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that
  all is well in the fold.  In the solemn calm of the awakening morn
  that note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and
  rapidity.  This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways--by
  the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock
  breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity,
  or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular
  palpitation.  The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard
  to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity.
  
  He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy
  dawn, and ascended the hill.  The forward ewes were kept apart from
  those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two
  hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock.  These two hundred
  seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill.  There were the
  fifty with their lambs, enclosed at the other end as he had left
  them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock, were nowhere.
  Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call:
  
  "Ovey, ovey, ovey!"
  
  Not a single bleat.  He went to the hedge; a gap had been broken
  through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep.  Rather
  surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it
  down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in winter-time, of
  which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the
  hedge.  They were not in the plantation.  He called again: the
  valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the
  lost Hylas on the Mysian shore; but no sheep.  He passed through the
  trees and along the ridge of the hill.  On the extreme summit, where
  the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were
  stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the
  younger dog standing against the sky--dark and motionless as Napoleon
  at St. Helena.
  
  A horrible conviction darted through Oak.  With a sensation of bodily
  faintness he advanced: at one point the rails were broken through,
  and there he saw the footprints of his ewes.  The dog came up, licked
  his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward
  for signal services rendered.  Oak looked over the precipice.  The
  ewes lay dead and dying at its foot--a heap of two hundred mangled
  carcasses, representing in their condition just now at least two
  hundred more.
  
  Oak was an intensely humane man: indeed, his humanity often tore in
  pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and
  carried him on as by gravitation.  A shadow in his life had always
  been that his flock ended in mutton--that a day came and found every
  shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenseless sheep.  His first
  feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle
  ewes and their unborn lambs.
  
  It was a second to remember another phase of the matter.  The
  sheep were not insured.  All the savings of a frugal life had been
  dispersed at a blow; his hopes of being an independent farmer were
  laid low--possibly for ever.  Gabriel's energies, patience, and
  industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life
  between eighteen and eight-and-twenty, to reach his present stage of
  progress that no more seemed to be left in him.  He leant down upon a
  rail, and covered his face with his hands.
  
  Stupors, however, do not last for ever, and Farmer Oak recovered from
  his.  It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one
  sentence he uttered was in thankfulness:--
  
  "Thank God I am not married: what would SHE have done in the poverty
  now coming upon me!"
  
  Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly
  surveyed the scene.  By the outer margin of the Pit was an oval pond,
  and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon
  which had only a few days to last--the morning star dogging her on
  the left hand.  The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the
  world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of
  the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a
  phosphoric streak upon the water.  All this Oak saw and remembered.
  
  As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still
  under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep,
  the more he ran after them the better, had at the end of his meal
  off the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and
  spirits, collected all the ewes into a corner, driven the timid
  creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main
  force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a
  portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge.
  
  George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered
  too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically
  shot at twelve o'clock that same day--another instance of the
  untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers
  who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and
  attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely
  of compromise.
  
  Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer--on the strength of Oak's
  promising look and character--who was receiving a percentage from the
  farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found
  that the value of stock, plant, and implements which were really his
  own would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a
  free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more.
  
  
  
  
  
  THE FAIR--THE JOURNEY--THE FIRE
  
  
  Two months passed away.  We are brought on to a day in February, on
  which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county-town
  of Casterbridge.
  
  At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and
  hearty labourers waiting upon Chance--all men of the stamp to whom
  labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and
  pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among
  these, carters and waggoners were distinguished by having a piece
  of whip-cord twisted round their hats; thatchers wore a fragment of
  woven straw; shepherds held their sheep-crooks in their hands; and
  thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance.
  
  In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior
  appearance to the rest--in fact, his superiority was marked enough to
  lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly,
  as to a farmer, and to use "Sir" as a finishing word.  His answer
  always was,--
  
  "I am looking for a place myself--a bailiff's.  Do ye know of anybody
  who wants one?"
  
  Gabriel was paler now.  His eyes were more meditative, and his
  expression was more sad.  He had passed through an ordeal of
  wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.  He
  had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very
  slime-pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he
  had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though
  it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when
  it does not.  And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the
  loss gain.
  
  In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a
  sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the
  four streets.  As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself
  not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them, and gone
  off to serve his country.  Weary of standing in the market-place, and
  not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided
  to offer himself in some other capacity than that of bailiff.
  
  All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds.  Sheep-tending was
  Gabriel's speciality.  Turning down an obscure street and entering
  an obscurer lane, he went up to a smith's shop.
  
  "How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook?"
  
  "Twenty minutes."
  
  "How much?"
  
  "Two shillings."
  
  He sat on a bench and the crook was made, a stem being given him into
  the bargain.
  
  He then went to a ready-made clothes' shop, the owner of which had a
  large rural connection.  As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's
  money, he attempted, and carried out, an exchange of his overcoat for
  a shepherd's regulation smock-frock.
  
  This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the
  centre of the town, and stood on the kerb of the pavement, as a
  shepherd, crook in hand.
  
  Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that
  bailiffs were most in demand.  However, two or three farmers noticed
  him and drew near.  Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined
  form:--
  
  "Where do you come from?"
  
  "Norcombe."
  
  "That's a long way.
  
  "Fifteen miles."
  
  "Who's farm were you upon last?"
  
  "My own."
  
  This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The
  inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously.
  Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never
  made advance beyond this point.
  
  It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize
  a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for
  a chance of using it.  Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his
  colours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the
  whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair.  It grew dusk.
  Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn-exchange.
  Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock
  pocket, touched his flute which he carried there.  Here was an
  opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice.
  
  He drew out his flute and began to play "Jockey to the Fair" in the
  style of a man who had never known moment's sorrow.  Oak could pipe
  with Arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes
  cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers.  He played on
  with spirit, and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small
  fortune to a destitute man.
  
  By making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at
  Shottsford the next day.
  
  "How far is Shottsford?"
  
  "Ten miles t'other side of Weatherbury."
  
  Weatherbury!  It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before.
  This information was like coming from night into noon.
  
  "How far is it to Weatherbury?"
  
  "Five or six miles."
  
  Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but
  the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose
  Shottsford fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the
  Weatherbury quarter.  Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means
  uninteresting intrinsically.  If report spoke truly they were as
  hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county.  Oak
  resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford,
  and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended
  as the direct route to the village in question.
  
  The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks,
  whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and
  folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more
  rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode
  on in undisturbed serenity.  On the higher levels the dead and
  dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along
  helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in
  the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in
  comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving,
  but flying away if he stopped to look at them.  He passed by Yalbury
  Wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the
  crack-voiced cock-pheasants "cu-uck, cuck," and the wheezy whistle of
  the hens.
  
  By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the
  landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.  He descended
  Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, drawn up
  under a great over-hanging tree by the roadside.
  
  On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it, the
  spot being apparently quite deserted.  The waggon, from its position,
  seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half
  a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty.
  Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his
  position.  He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of
  the journey; and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted
  to lie down upon the hay in the waggon instead of pushing on to the
  village of Weatherbury, and having to pay for a lodging.
  
  Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle
  of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into
  the lonely waggon.  Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and,
  as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over
  him by way of bed-clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling,
  physically, as comfortable as ever he had been in his life.  Inward
  melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far
  beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present
  untoward page of his history.  So, thinking of his misfortunes,
  amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common
  with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead
  of having to wait for him.
  
  On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no
  idea, Oak found that the waggon was in motion.  He was being carried
  along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without
  springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his
  head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a
  kettledrum-stick.  He then distinguished voices in conversation,
  coming from the forpart of the waggon.  His concern at this dilemma
  (which would have been alarm, had he been a thriving man; but
  misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror) led him to peer
  cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars
  above him.  Charles's Wain was getting towards a right angle with
  the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine
  o'clock--in other words, that he had slept two hours.  This small
  astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and
  whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose
  hands he had fallen.
  
  Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs
  outside the waggon, one of whom was driving.  Gabriel soon found that
  this was the waggoner, and it appeared they had come from
  Casterbridge fair, like himself.
  
  A conversation was in progress, which continued thus:--
  
  "Be as 'twill, she's a fine handsome body as far's looks be
  concerned.  But that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy
  cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides."
  
  "Ay--so 'a do seem, Billy Smallbury--so 'a do seem."  This utterance
  was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of
  the waggon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx.
  It came from the man who held the reins.
  
  "She's a very vain feymell--so 'tis said here and there."
  
  "Ah, now.  If so be 'tis like that, I can't look her in the face.
  Lord, no: not I--heh-heh-heh!  Such a shy man as I be!"
  
  "Yes--she's very vain.  'Tis said that every night at going to bed
  she looks in the glass to put on her night-cap properly."
  
  "And not a married woman.  Oh, the world!"
  
  "And 'a can play the peanner, so 'tis said.  Can play so clever that
  'a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a
  man can wish for."
  
  "D'ye tell o't!  A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man!
  And how do she pay?"
  
  "That I don't know, Master Poorgrass."
  
  On hearing these and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed
  into Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba.  There
  were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition, for the
  waggon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going
  beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some
  estate.  They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury and not to
  alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the waggon
  unseen.
  
  He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate,
  and mounting thereon, he sat meditating whether to seek a cheap
  lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under
  some hay or corn-stack.  The crunching jangle of the waggon died upon
  his ear.  He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand
  an unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant.  Oak watched
  it, and the glow increased.  Something was on fire.
  
  Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side
  upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the
  exact direction of the fire.  The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio
  by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer
  the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness.  A
  rick-yard was the source of the fire.  His weary face now began to
  be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his
  smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of
  thorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening
  hedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright
  in the same abounding rays.  He came up to the boundary fence, and
  stood to regain breath.  It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by
  a living soul.
  
  The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone
  as to preclude a possibility of saving it.  A rick burns differently
  from a house.  As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in
  flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is
  lost to the eye.  However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together,
  will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the
  outside.
  
  This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,
  and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness.  It glowed on
  the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of
  a cigar.  Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking
  noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet
  roar, but no crackle.  Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the
  back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres,
  illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow
  uniformity.  Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a
  creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms,
  and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips,
  glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks
  flew in clusters like birds from a nest.
  
  Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the
  case to be more serious than he had at first imagined.  A scroll
  of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling
  juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of
  others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead
  of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively
  isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining
  stacks of the group.
  
  Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone.  The
  first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his
  thoughts were several yards in advance of his body, which they could
  never drag on fast enough.
  
  "O, man--fire, fire!  A good master and a bad servant is fire,
  fire!--I mane a bad servant and a good master.  Oh, Mark Clark--come!
  And you, Billy Smallbury--and you, Maryann Money--and you, Jan
  Coggan, and Matthew there!"  Other figures now appeared behind this
  shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from
  being alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily
  up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by
  their owners' movements.  The assemblage--belonging to that class of
  society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its
  feelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable
  confusion of purpose.
  
  "Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried Gabriel to those
  nearest to him.  The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these,
  tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted
  playfully.  If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.
  
  "Get a tarpaulin--quick!" said Gabriel.
  
  A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the
  channel.  The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the
  corn-stack, and stood up vertical.
  
  "Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said
  Gabriel again.
  
  The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the
  huge roof covering the wheat-stack.
  
  "A ladder," cried Gabriel.
  
  "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,"
  said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
  
  Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage
  in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and
  occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up
  the beetling face.  He at once sat astride the very apex, and began
  with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged
  thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and
  some water.
  
  Billy Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this
  time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside
  Oak upon the thatch.  The smoke at this corner was stifling, and
  Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed
  Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a
  long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other,
  kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.
  
  On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing
  all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.
  They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying
  pattern.  Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct
  rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back.
  By her side was another woman, on foot.  These two seemed to keep at
  a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.
  
  "He's a shepherd," said the woman on foot.  "Yes--he is. See how his
  crook shines as he beats the rick with it.  And his smock-frock is
  burnt in two holes, I declare!  A fine young shepherd he is too,
  ma'am."
  
  "Whose shepherd is he?" said the equestrian in a clear voice.
  
  "Don't know, ma'am."
  
  "Don't any of the others know?"
  
  "Nobody at all--I've asked 'em.  Quite a stranger, they say."
  
  The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked
  anxiously around.
  
  "Do you think the barn is safe?" she said.
  
  "D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?" said the second woman,
  passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.
  
  "Safe-now--leastwise I think so.  If this rick had gone the barn
  would have followed.  'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done
  the most good--he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great
  long-arms about like a windmill."
  
  "He does work hard," said the young woman on horseback, looking up at
  Gabriel through her thick woollen veil.  "I wish he was shepherd
  here.  Don't any of you know his name."
  
  "Never heard the man's name in my life, or seed his form afore."
  
  The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being
  no longer required of him, he made as if to descend.
  
  "Maryann," said the girl on horseback, "go to him as he comes down,
  and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he
  has done."
  
  Maryann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the
  ladder.  She delivered her message.
  
  "Where is your master the farmer?" asked Gabriel, kindling with the
  idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now.
  
  "'Tisn't a master; 'tis a mistress, shepherd."
  
  "A woman farmer?"
  
  "Ay, 'a b'lieve, and a rich one too!" said a bystander. "Lately
  'a came here from a distance.  Took on her uncle's farm, who died
  suddenly.  Used to measure his money in half-pint cups.  They say
  now that she've business in every bank in Casterbridge, and thinks
  no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I, do
  pitch-halfpenny--not a bit in the world, shepherd."
  
  "That's she, back there upon the pony," said Maryann; "wi' her face
  a-covered up in that black cloth with holes in it."
  
  Oak, his features smudged, grimy, and undiscoverable from the smoke
  and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water,
  the ash stem of his sheep-crook charred six inches shorter, advanced
  with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the
  slight female form in the saddle.  He lifted his hat with respect,
  and not without gallantry: stepping close to her hanging feet he said
  in a hesitating voice,--
  
  "Do you happen to want a shepherd, ma'am?"
  
  She lifted the wool veil tied round her face, and looked all
  astonishment.  Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba
  Everdene, were face to face.
  
  Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed
  and sad voice,--
  
  "Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?"
  
  
  
  
  
  RECOGNITION--A TIMID GIRL
  
  
  Bathsheba withdrew into the shade.  She scarcely knew whether most to
  be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at
  its awkwardness.  There was room for a little pity, also for a very
  little exultation: the former at his position, the latter at her own.
  Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel's declaration of
  love to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it.
  
  "Yes," she murmured, putting on an air of dignity, and turning again
  to him with a little warmth of cheek; "I do want a shepherd.  But--"
  
  "He's the very man, ma'am," said one of the villagers, quietly.
  
  Conviction breeds conviction.  "Ay, that 'a is," said a second,
  decisively.
  
  "The man, truly!" said a third, with heartiness.
  
  "He's all there!" said number four, fervidly.
  
  "Then will you tell him to speak to the bailiff," said Bathsheba.
  
  All was practical again now.  A summer eve and loneliness would have
  been necessary to give the meeting its proper fulness of romance.
  
  The bailiff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation
  within his breast at discovering that this Ashtoreth of strange
  report was only a modification of Venus the well-known and admired,
  retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring.
  
  The fire before them wasted away.  "Men," said Bathsheba, "you shall
  take a little refreshment after this extra work.  Will you come to
  the house?"
  
  "We could knock in a bit and a drop a good deal freer, Miss, if so be
  ye'd send it to Warren's Malthouse," replied the spokesman.
  
  Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on
  to the village in twos and threes--Oak and the bailiff being left by
  the rick alone.
  
  "And now," said the bailiff, finally, "all is settled, I think, about
  your coming, and I am going home-along.  Good-night to ye, shepherd."
  
  "Can you get me a lodging?" inquired Gabriel.
  
  "That I can't, indeed," he said, moving past Oak as a Christian edges
  past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute.  "If you
  follow on the road till you come to Warren's Malthouse, where they
  are all gone to have their snap of victuals, I daresay some of 'em
  will tell you of a place.  Good-night to ye, shepherd."
  
  The bailiff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as
  himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still
  astonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to
  her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of
  Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here.  But
  some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.
  
  Obliged, to some extent, to forgo dreaming in order to find the way,
  he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall where
  several ancient trees grew.  There was a wide margin of grass along
  here, and Gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at
  this indurating period of the year.  When abreast of a trunk which
  appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure
  was standing behind it.  Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in
  another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was
  enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started and assumed
  a careless position.
  
  It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad.
  
  "Good-night to you," said Gabriel, heartily.
  
  "Good-night," said the girl to Gabriel.
  
  The voice was unexpectedly attractive; it was the low and dulcet note
  suggestive of romance; common in descriptions, rare in experience.
  
  "I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse?"
  Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information, indirectly to get
  more of the music.
  
  "Quite right.  It's at the bottom of the hill.  And do you know--"
  The girl hesitated and then went on again.  "Do you know how late
  they keep open the Buck's Head Inn?"  She seemed to be won by
  Gabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations.
  
  "I don't know where the Buck's Head is, or anything about it.  Do you
  think of going there to-night?"
  
  "Yes--"  The woman again paused.  There was no necessity for any
  continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to
  proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a
  remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by
  stealth.  "You are not a Weatherbury man?" she said, timorously.
  
  "I am not.  I am the new shepherd--just arrived."
  
  "Only a shepherd--and you seem almost a farmer by your ways."
  
  "Only a shepherd," Gabriel repeated, in a dull cadence of finality.
  His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the
  girl; and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some
  sort.  She may have perceived the direction of his face, for she said
  coaxingly,--
  
  "You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will
  you--at least, not for a day or two?"
  
  "I won't if you wish me not to," said Oak.
  
  "Thank you, indeed," the other replied.  "I am rather poor, and I
  don't want people to know anything about me."  Then she was silent
  and shivered.
  
  "You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night," Gabriel observed.
  "I would advise 'ee to get indoors."
  
  "O no!  Would you mind going on and leaving me?  I thank you much for
  what you have told me."
  
  "I will go on," he said; adding hesitatingly,--"Since you are not
  very well off, perhaps you would accept this trifle from me.  It is
  only a shilling, but it is all I have to spare."
  
  "Yes, I will take it," said the stranger gratefully.
  
  She extended her hand; Gabriel his.  In feeling for each other's palm
  in the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident
  occurred which told much.  Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young
  woman's wrist.  It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity.  He
  had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery
  of his lambs when overdriven.  It suggested a consumption too great
  of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was
  already too little.
  
  "What is the matter?"
  
  "Nothing."
  
  "But there is?"
  
  "No, no, no!  Let your having seen me be a secret!"
  
  "Very well; I will.  Good-night, again."
  
  "Good-night."
  
  The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended
  into the village of Weatherbury, or Lower Longpuddle as it was
  sometimes called.  He fancied that he had felt himself in the
  penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile
  creature.  But wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and
  Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this.
  
  
  
  
  
  THE MALTHOUSE--THE CHAT--NEWS
  
  
  Warren's Malthouse was enclosed by an old wall inwrapped with ivy,
  and though not much of the exterior was visible at this hour, the
  character and purposes of the building were clearly enough shown by
  its outline upon the sky.  From the walls an overhanging thatched
  roof sloped up to a point in the centre, upon which rose a small
  wooden lantern, fitted with louvre-boards on all the four sides,
  and from these openings a mist was dimly perceived to be escaping
  into the night air.  There was no window in front; but a square
  hole in the door was glazed with a single pane, through which red,
  comfortable rays now stretched out upon the ivied wall in front.
  Voices were to be heard inside.
  
  Oak's hand skimmed the surface of the door with fingers extended to
  an Elymas-the-Sorcerer pattern, till he found a leathern strap, which
  he pulled.  This lifted a wooden latch, and the door swung open.
  
  The room inside was lighted only by the ruddy glow from the kiln
  mouth, which shone over the floor with the streaming horizontality
  of the setting sun, and threw upwards the shadows of all facial
  irregularities in those assembled around.  The stone-flag floor was
  worn into a path from the doorway to the kiln, and into undulations
  everywhere.  A curved settle of unplaned oak stretched along one
  side, and in a remote corner was a small bed and bedstead, the owner
  and frequent occupier of which was the maltster.
  
  This aged man was now sitting opposite the fire, his frosty white
  hair and beard overgrowing his gnarled figure like the grey moss and
  lichen upon a leafless apple-tree.  He wore breeches and the laced-up
  shoes called ankle-jacks; he kept his eyes fixed upon the fire.
  
  Gabriel's nose was greeted by an atmosphere laden with the sweet
  smell of new malt.  The conversation (which seemed to have been
  concerning the origin of the fire) immediately ceased, and every one
  ocularly criticised him to the degree expressed by contracting the
  flesh of their foreheads and looking at him with narrowed eyelids, as
  if he had been a light too strong for their sight.  Several exclaimed
  meditatively, after this operation had been completed:--
  
  "Oh, 'tis the new shepherd, 'a b'lieve."
  
  "We thought we heard a hand pawing about the door for the bobbin, but
  weren't sure 'twere not a dead leaf blowed across," said another.
  "Come in, shepherd; sure ye be welcome, though we don't know yer
  name."
  
  "Gabriel Oak, that's my name, neighbours."
  
  The ancient maltster sitting in the midst turned at this--his turning
  being as the turning of a rusty crane.
  
  "That's never Gable Oak's grandson over at Norcombe--never!" he said,
  as a formula expressive of surprise, which nobody was supposed for a
  moment to take literally.
  
  "My father and my grandfather were old men of the name of Gabriel,"
  said the shepherd, placidly.
  
  "Thought I knowed the man's face as I seed him on the rick!--thought
  I did!  And where be ye trading o't to now, shepherd?"
  
  "I'm thinking of biding here," said Mr. Oak.
  
  "Knowed yer grandfather for years and years!" continued the maltster,
  the words coming forth of their own accord as if the momentum
  previously imparted had been sufficient.
  
  "Ah--and did you!"
  
  "Knowed yer grandmother."
  
  "And her too!"
  
  "Likewise knowed yer father when he was a child.  Why, my boy
  Jacob there and your father were sworn brothers--that they were
  sure--weren't ye, Jacob?"
  
  "Ay, sure," said his son, a young man about sixty-five, with a
  semi-bald head and one tooth in the left centre of his upper jaw,
  which made much of itself by standing prominent, like a milestone in
  a bank.  "But 'twas Joe had most to do with him.  However, my son
  William must have knowed the very man afore us--didn't ye, Billy,
  afore ye left Norcombe?"
  
  "No, 'twas Andrew," said Jacob's son Billy, a child of forty, or
  thereabouts, who manifested the peculiarity of possessing a cheerful
  soul in a gloomy body, and whose whiskers were assuming a chinchilla
  shade here and there.
  
  "I can mind Andrew," said Oak, "as being a man in the place when I
  was quite a child."
  
  "Ay--the other day I and my youngest daughter, Liddy, were over at
  my grandson's christening," continued Billy.  "We were talking about
  this very family, and 'twas only last Purification Day in this very
  world, when the use-money is gied away to the second-best poor folk,
  you know, shepherd, and I can mind the day because they all had to
  traypse up to the vestry--yes, this very man's family."
  
  "Come, shepherd, and drink.  'Tis gape and swaller with us--a drap of
  sommit, but not of much account," said the maltster, removing from
  the fire his eyes, which were vermilion-red and bleared by gazing
  into it for so many years.  "Take up the God-forgive-me, Jacob.  See
  if 'tis warm, Jacob."
  
  Jacob stooped to the God-forgive-me, which was a two-handled tall mug
  standing in the ashes, cracked and charred with heat: it was rather
  furred with extraneous matter about the outside, especially in the
  crevices of the handles, the innermost curves of which may not have
  seen daylight for several years by reason of this encrustation
  thereon--formed of ashes accidentally wetted with cider and baked
  hard; but to the mind of any sensible drinker the cup was no
  worse for that, being incontestably clean on the inside and about
  the rim.  It may be observed that such a class of mug is called a
  God-forgive-me in Weatherbury and its vicinity for uncertain reasons;
  probably because its size makes any given toper feel ashamed of
  himself when he sees its bottom in drinking it empty.
  
  Jacob, on receiving the order to see if the liquor was warm enough,
  placidly dipped his forefinger into it by way of thermometer, and
  having pronounced it nearly of the proper degree, raised the cup and
  very civilly attempted to dust some of the ashes from the bottom with
  the skirt of his smock-frock, because Shepherd Oak was a stranger.
  
  "A clane cup for the shepherd," said the maltster commandingly.
  
  "No--not at all," said Gabriel, in a reproving tone of
  considerateness.  "I never fuss about dirt in its pure state, and
  when I know what sort it is."  Taking the mug he drank an inch or
  more from the depth of its contents, and duly passed it to the
  next man.  "I wouldn't think of giving such trouble to neighbours
  in washing up when there's so much work to be done in the world
  already." continued Oak in a moister tone, after recovering from the
  stoppage of breath which is occasioned by pulls at large mugs.
  
  "A right sensible man," said Jacob.
  
  "True, true; it can't be gainsaid!" observed a brisk young man--Mark
  Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere
  in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink
  with was, unfortunately, to pay for.
  
  "And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent,
  shepherd.  The cider will go down better with a bit of victuals.
  Don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in
  the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather
  gritty.  There, 'tis clane dirt; and we all know what that is, as you
  say, and you bain't a particular man we see, shepherd."
  
  "True, true--not at all," said the friendly Oak.
  
  "Don't let your teeth quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at
  all.  Ah! 'tis wonderful what can be done by contrivance!"
  
  "My own mind exactly, neighbour."
  
  "Ah, he's his grandfer's own grandson!--his grandfer were just such a
  nice unparticular man!" said the maltster.
  
  "Drink, Henry Fray--drink," magnanimously said Jan Coggan, a person
  who held Saint-Simonian notions of share and share alike where liquor
  was concerned, as the vessel showed signs of approaching him in its
  gradual revolution among them.
  
  Having at this moment reached the end of a wistful gaze into mid-air,
  Henry did not refuse.  He was a man of more than middle age, with
  eyebrows high up in his forehead, who laid it down that the law of
  the world was bad, with a long-suffering look through his listeners
  at the world alluded to, as it presented itself to his imagination.
  He always signed his name "Henery"--strenuously insisting upon that
  spelling, and if any passing schoolmaster ventured to remark that the
  second "e" was superfluous and old-fashioned, he received the reply
  that "H-e-n-e-r-y" was the name he was christened and the name he
  would stick to--in the tone of one to whom orthographical differences
  were matters which had a great deal to do with personal character.
  
  Mr. Jan Coggan, who had passed the cup to Henery, was a crimson man
  with a spacious countenance and private glimmer in his eye, whose
  name had appeared on the marriage register of Weatherbury and
  neighbouring parishes as best man and chief witness in countless
  unions of the previous twenty years; he also very frequently filled
  the post of head godfather in baptisms of the subtly-jovial kind.
  
  "Come, Mark Clark--come.  Ther's plenty more in the barrel," said
  Jan.
  
  "Ay--that I will, 'tis my only doctor," replied Mr. Clark, who,
  twenty years younger than Jan Coggan, revolved in the same orbit.  He
  secreted mirth on all occasions for special discharge at popular
  parties.
  
  "Why, Joseph Poorgrass, ye han't had a drop!" said Mr. Coggan to a
  self-conscious man in the background, thrusting the cup towards him.
  
  "Such a modest man as he is!" said Jacob Smallbury.  "Why, ye've
  hardly had strength of eye enough to look in our young mis'ess's
  face, so I hear, Joseph?"
  
  All looked at Joseph Poorgrass with pitying reproach.
  
  "No--I've hardly looked at her at all," simpered Joseph, reducing his
  body smaller whilst talking, apparently from a meek sense of undue
  prominence.  "And when I seed her, 'twas nothing but blushes with
  me!"
  
  "Poor feller," said Mr. Clark.
  
  "'Tis a curious nature for a man," said Jan Coggan.
  
  "Yes," continued Joseph Poorgrass--his shyness, which was so painful
  as a defect, filling him with a mild complacency now that it was
  regarded as an interesting study.  "'Twere blush, blush, blush with
  me every minute of the time, when she was speaking to me."
  
  "I believe ye, Joseph Poorgrass, for we all know ye to be a very
  bashful man."
  
  "'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul," said the maltster.  "And
  how long have ye have suffered from it, Joseph?" [a]
  
     [Transcriber's note a: Alternate text, appears in all three
     editions on hand: "'Tis a' awkward gift for a man, poor soul,"
     said the maltster.  "And ye have suffered from it a long time, we
     know."
  
     "Ay, ever since..."]
  
  "Oh, ever since I was a boy.  Yes--mother was concerned to her heart
  about it--yes.  But 'twas all nought."
  
  "Did ye ever go into the world to try and stop it, Joseph Poorgrass?"
  
  "Oh ay, tried all sorts o' company.  They took me to Greenhill
  Fair, and into a great gay jerry-go-nimble show, where there were
  women-folk riding round--standing upon horses, with hardly anything
  on but their smocks; but it didn't cure me a morsel.  And then I
  was put errand-man at the Women's Skittle Alley at the back of the
  Tailor's Arms in Casterbridge.  'Twas a horrible sinful situation,
  and a very curious place for a good man.  I had to stand and look
  ba'dy people in the face from morning till night; but 'twas no use--I
  was just as bad as ever after all.  Blushes hev been in the family
  for generations.  There, 'tis a happy providence that I be no worse."
  
  "True," said Jacob Smallbury, deepening his thoughts to a profounder
  view of the subject.  "'Tis a thought to look at, that ye might have
  been worse; but even as you be, 'tis a very bad affliction for 'ee,
  Joseph.  For ye see, shepherd, though 'tis very well for a woman,
  dang it all, 'tis awkward for a man like him, poor feller?"
  
  "'Tis--'tis," said Gabriel, recovering from a meditation.  "Yes, very
  awkward for the man."
  
  "Ay, and he's very timid, too," observed Jan Coggan.  "Once he had
  been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and
  lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood, didn't
  ye, Master Poorgrass?"
  
  "No, no, no; not that story!" expostulated the modest man, forcing a
  laugh to bury his concern.
  
  "--And so 'a lost himself quite," continued Mr. Coggan, with an
  impassive face, implying that a true narrative, like time and tide,
  must run its course and would respect no man.  "And as he was coming
  along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to
  find his way out of the trees nohow, 'a cried out, 'Man-a-lost!
  man-a-lost!'  A owl in a tree happened to be crying 'Whoo-whoo-whoo!'
  as owls do, you know, shepherd" (Gabriel nodded), "and Joseph, all in
  a tremble, said, 'Joseph Poorgrass, of Weatherbury, sir!'"
  
  "No, no, now--that's too much!" said the timid man, becoming a man
  of brazen courage all of a sudden.  "I didn't say SIR.  I'll take my
  oath I didn't say 'Joseph Poorgrass o' Weatherbury, sir.'  No, no;
  what's right is right, and I never said sir to the bird, knowing very
  well that no man of a gentleman's rank would be hollering there at
  that time o' night.  'Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury,'--that's every
  word I said, and I shouldn't ha' said that if 't hadn't been for
  Keeper Day's metheglin....  There, 'twas a merciful thing it ended
  where it did."
  
  The question of which was right being tacitly waived by the company,
  Jan went on meditatively:--
  
  "And he's the fearfullest man, bain't ye, Joseph?  Ay, another time
  ye were lost by Lambing-Down Gate, weren't ye, Joseph?"
  
  "I was," replied Poorgrass, as if there were some conditions too
  serious even for modesty to remember itself under, this being one.
  
  "Yes; that were the middle of the night, too.  The gate would not
  open, try how he would, and knowing there was the Devil's hand in it,
  he kneeled down."
  
  "Ay," said Joseph, acquiring confidence from the warmth of the fire,
  the cider, and a perception of the narrative capabilities of the
  experience alluded to.  "My heart died within me, that time; but I
  kneeled down and said the Lord's Prayer, and then the Belief right
  through, and then the Ten Commandments, in earnest prayer.  But
  no, the gate wouldn't open; and then I went on with Dearly Beloved
  Brethren, and, thinks I, this makes four, and 'tis all I know out
  of book, and if this don't do it nothing will, and I'm a lost man.
  Well, when I got to Saying After Me, I rose from my knees and found
  the gate would open--yes, neighbours, the gate opened the same as
  ever."
  
  A meditation on the obvious inference was indulged in by all, and
  during its continuance each directed his vision into the ashpit,
  which glowed like a desert in the tropics under a vertical sun,
  shaping their eyes long and liny, partly because of the light, partly
  from the depth of the subject discussed.
  
  Gabriel broke the silence.  "What sort of a place is this to live at,
  and what sort of a mis'ess is she to work under?" Gabriel's bosom
  thrilled gently as he thus slipped under the notice of the assembly
  the inner-most subject of his heart.
  
  "We d' know little of her--nothing.  She only showed herself a few
  days ago.  Her uncle was took bad, and the doctor was called with his
  world-wide skill; but he couldn't save the man.  As I take it, she's
  going to keep on the farm.
  
  "That's about the shape o't, 'a b'lieve," said Jan Coggan.  "Ay, 'tis
  a very good family.  I'd as soon be under 'em as under one here and
  there.  Her uncle was a very fair sort of man.  Did ye know en,
  shepherd--a bachelor-man?"
  
  "Not at all."
  
  "I used to go to his house a-courting my first wife, Charlotte,
  who was his dairymaid.  Well, a very good-hearted man were Farmer
  Everdene, and I being a respectable young fellow was allowed to call
  and see her and drink as much ale as I liked, but not to carry away
  any--outside my skin I mane of course."
  
  "Ay, ay, Jan Coggan; we know yer maning."
  
  "And so you see 'twas beautiful ale, and I wished to value his
  kindness as much as I could, and not to be so ill-mannered as to
  drink only a thimbleful, which would have been insulting the man's
  generosity--"
  
  "True, Master Coggan, 'twould so," corroborated Mark Clark.
  
  "--And so I used to eat a lot of salt fish afore going, and then by
  the time I got there I were as dry as a lime-basket--so thorough dry
  that that ale would slip down--ah, 'twould slip down sweet!  Happy
  times!  Heavenly times!  Such lovely drunks as I used to have at that
  house!  You can mind, Jacob?  You used to go wi' me sometimes."
  
  "I can--I can," said Jacob.  "That one, too, that we had at Buck's
  Head on a White Monday was a pretty tipple."
  
  "'Twas.  But for a wet of the better class, that brought you no
  nearer to the horned man than you were afore you begun, there was
  none like those in Farmer Everdene's kitchen.  Not a single damn
  allowed; no, not a bare poor one, even at the most cheerful moment
  when all were blindest, though the good old word of sin thrown in
  here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul."
  
  "True," said the maltster.  "Nater requires her swearing at the
  regular times, or she's not herself; and unholy exclamations is a
  necessity of life."
  
  "But Charlotte," continued Coggan--"not a word of the sort would
  Charlotte allow, nor the smallest item of taking in vain....  Ay,
  poor Charlotte, I wonder if she had the good fortune to get into
  Heaven when 'a died!  But 'a was never much in luck's way, and
  perhaps 'a went downwards after all, poor soul."
  
  "And did any of you know Miss Everdene's father and mother?" inquired
  the shepherd, who found some difficulty in keeping the conversation
  in the desired channel.
  
  "I knew them a little," said Jacob Smallbury; "but they were
  townsfolk, and didn't live here.  They've been dead for years.
  Father, what sort of people were mis'ess' father and mother?"
  
  "Well," said the maltster, "he wasn't much to look at; but she was a
  lovely woman.  He was fond enough of her as his sweetheart."
  
  "Used to kiss her scores and long-hundreds o' times, so 'twas said,"
  observed Coggan.
  
  "He was very proud of her, too, when they were married, as I've been
  told," said the maltster.
  
  "Ay," said Coggan.  "He admired her so much that he used to light the
  candle three times a night to look at her."
  
  "Boundless love; I shouldn't have supposed it in the universe!"
  murmured Joseph Poorgrass, who habitually spoke on a large scale in
  his moral reflections.
  
  "Well, to be sure," said Gabriel.
  
  "Oh, 'tis true enough.  I knowed the man and woman both well.  Levi
  Everdene--that was the man's name, sure.  'Man,' saith I in my
  hurry, but he were of a higher circle of life than that--'a was a
  gentleman-tailor really, worth scores of pounds.  And he became a
  very celebrated bankrupt two or three times."
  
  "Oh, I thought he was quite a common man!" said Joseph.
  
  "Oh no, no!  That man failed for heaps of money; hundreds in gold and
  silver."
  
  The maltster being rather short of breath, Mr. Coggan, after absently
  scrutinising a coal which had fallen among the ashes, took up the
  narrative, with a private twirl of his eye:--
  
  "Well, now, you'd hardly believe it, but that man--our Miss
  Everdene's father--was one of the ficklest husbands alive, after a
  while.  Understand? 'a didn't want to be fickle, but he couldn't help
  it.  The pore feller were faithful and true enough to her in his
  wish, but his heart would rove, do what he would.  He spoke to me in
  real tribulation about it once.  'Coggan,' he said, 'I could never
  wish for a handsomer woman than I've got, but feeling she's ticketed
  as my lawful wife, I can't help my wicked heart wandering, do what I
  will.'  But at last I believe he cured it by making her take off her
  wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name as they sat together
  after the shop was shut, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only
  his sweetheart, and not married to him at all.  And as soon as he
  could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh,
  'a got to like her as well as ever, and they lived on a perfect
  picture of mutel love."
  
  "Well, 'twas a most ungodly remedy," murmured Joseph Poorgrass; "but
  we ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it
  from being any worse.  You see, he might have gone the bad road and
  given his eyes to unlawfulness entirely--yes, gross unlawfulness, so
  to say it."
  
  "You see," said Billy Smallbury, "The man's will was to do right,
  sure enough, but his heart didn't chime in."
  
  "He got so much better, that he was quite godly in his later years,
  wasn't he, Jan?" said Joseph Poorgrass.  "He got himself confirmed
  over again in a more serious way, and took to saying 'Amen' almost as
  loud as the clerk, and he liked to copy comforting verses from the
  tombstones.  He used, too, to hold the money-plate at Let Your Light
  so Shine, and stand godfather to poor little come-by-chance children;
  and he kept a missionary box upon his table to nab folks unawares
  when they called; yes, and he would box the charity-boys' ears, if
  they laughed in church, till they could hardly stand upright, and do
  other deeds of piety natural to the saintly inclined."
  
  "Ay, at that time he thought of nothing but high things," added Billy
  Smallbury.  "One day Parson Thirdly met him and said, 'Good-Morning,
  Mister Everdene; 'tis a fine day!'  'Amen' said Everdene, quite
  absent-like, thinking only of religion when he seed a parson.  Yes,
  he was a very Christian man."
  
  "Their daughter was not at all a pretty chiel at that time," said
  Henery Fray.  "Never should have thought she'd have growed up such a
  handsome body as she is."
  
  "'Tis to be hoped her temper is as good as her face."
  
  "Well, yes; but the baily will have most to do with the business and
  ourselves.  Ah!" Henery gazed into the ashpit, and smiled volumes of
  ironical knowledge.
  
  "A queer Christian, like the Devil's head in a cowl, [1] as the
  saying is," volunteered Mark Clark.
  
     [Footnote 1: This phrase is a conjectural emendation of the
     unintelligible expression, "as the Devil said to the Owl,"
     used by the natives.]
  
  "He is," said Henery, implying that irony must cease at a certain
  point.  "Between we two, man and man, I believe that man would as
  soon tell a lie Sundays as working-days--that I do so."
  
  "Good faith, you do talk!" said Gabriel.
  
  "True enough," said the man of bitter moods, looking round upon
  the company with the antithetic laughter that comes from a keener
  appreciation of the miseries of life than ordinary men are capable
  of.  "Ah, there's people of one sort, and people of another, but
  that man--bless your souls!"
  
  Gabriel thought fit to change the subject.  "You must be a very aged
  man, malter, to have sons growed mild and ancient," he remarked.
  
  "Father's so old that 'a can't mind his age, can ye, father?"
  interposed Jacob.  "And he's growed terrible crooked too, lately,"
  Jacob continued, surveying his father's figure, which was rather
  more bowed than his own.  "Really one may say that father there is
  three-double."
  
  "Crooked folk will last a long while," said the maltster, grimly, and
  not in the best humour.
  
  "Shepherd would like to hear the pedigree of yer life, father--
  wouldn't ye, shepherd?"
  
  "Ay that I should," said Gabriel with the heartiness of a man who had
  longed to hear it for several months.  "What may your age be,
  malter?"
  
  The maltster cleared his throat in an exaggerated form for emphasis,
  and elongating his gaze to the remotest point of the ashpit, said, in
  the slow speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is so
  generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated in getting at it,
  "Well, I don't mind the year I were born in, but perhaps I can reckon
  up the places I've lived at, and so get it that way.  I bode at
  Upper Longpuddle across there" (nodding to the north) "till I were
  eleven. I bode seven at Kingsbere" (nodding to the east) "where
  I took to malting.  I went therefrom to Norcombe, and malted
  there two-and-twenty years, and-two-and-twenty years I was there
  turnip-hoeing and harvesting.  Ah, I knowed that old place, Norcombe,
  years afore you were thought of, Master Oak" (Oak smiled sincere
  belief in the fact).  "Then I malted at Durnover four year, and
  four year turnip-hoeing; and I was fourteen times eleven months at
  Millpond St. Jude's" (nodding north-west-by-north).  "Old Twills
  wouldn't hire me for more than eleven months at a time, to keep me
  from being chargeable to the parish if so be I was disabled.  Then I
  was three year at Mellstock, and I've been here one-and-thirty year
  come Candlemas.  How much is that?"
  
  "Hundred and seventeen," chuckled another old gentleman, given to
  mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat
  unobserved in a corner.
  
  "Well, then, that's my age," said the maltster, emphatically.
  
  "O no, father!" said Jacob.  "Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer
  and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought
  to count-both halves, father."
  
  "Chok' it all!  I lived through the summers, didn't I?  That's my
  question.  I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?"
  
  "Sure we shan't," said Gabriel, soothingly.
  
  "Ye be a very old aged person, malter," attested Jan Coggan, also
  soothingly. "We all know that, and ye must have a wonderful talented
  constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?"
  
  "True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting
  unanimously.
  
  The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough to
  voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a
  great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out
  of was three years older than he.
  
  While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute
  became visible over his smock-frock pocket, and Henery Fray
  exclaimed, "Surely, shepherd, I seed you blowing into a great flute
  by now at Casterbridge?"
  
  "You did," said Gabriel, blushing faintly.  "I've been in great
  trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it.  I used not to be so poor
  as I be now."
  
  "Never mind, heart!" said Mark Clark.  "You should take it
  careless-like, shepherd, and your time will come.  But we could thank
  ye for a tune, if ye bain't too tired?"
  
  "Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas," said Jan
  Coggan.  "Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!"
  
  "Ay, that I will," said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it
  together.  "A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall
  have and welcome."
  
  Oak then struck up "Jockey to the Fair," and played that sparkling
  melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in
  a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks
  and tapping with his foot to beat time.
  
  "He can blow the flute very well--that 'a can," said a young married
  man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "Susan
  Tall's husband."  He continued, "I'd as lief as not be able to blow
  into a flute as well as that."
  
  "He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a
  shepherd," murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence.  "We ought
  to feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs
  instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for
  God to have made the shepherd a loose low man--a man of iniquity, so
  to speak it--as what he is.  Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes
  we should feel real thanksgiving."
  
  "True, true,--real thanksgiving!" dashed in Mark Clark conclusively,
  not feeling it to be of any consequence to his opinion that he had
  only heard about a word and three-quarters of what Joseph had said.
  
  "Yes," added Joseph, beginning to feel like a man in the Bible; "for
  evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in
  the cleanest shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp
  upon the turnpike, if I may term it so."
  
  "Ay, I can mind yer face now, shepherd," said Henery Fray,
  criticising Gabriel with misty eyes as he entered upon his second
  tune.  "Yes--now I see 'ee blowing into the flute I know 'ee to be
  the same man I see play at Casterbridge, for yer mouth were scrimped
  up and yer eyes a-staring out like a strangled man's--just as they be
  now."
  
  "'Tis a pity that playing the flute should make a man look such a
  scarecrow," observed Mr. Mark Clark, with additional criticism of
  Gabriel's countenance, the latter person jerking out, with the
  ghastly grimace required by the instrument, the chorus of "Dame
  Durden:"--
  
     'Twas Moll' and Bet', and Doll' and Kate',
     And Dor'-othy Drag'-gle Tail'.
  
  "I hope you don't mind that young man's bad manners in naming your
  features?" whispered Joseph to Gabriel.
  
  "Not at all," said Mr. Oak.
  
  "For by nature ye be a very handsome man, shepherd," continued Joseph
  Poorgrass, with winning sauvity.
  
  "Ay, that ye be, shepard," said the company.
  
  "Thank you very much," said Oak, in the modest tone good manners
  demanded, thinking, however, that he would never let Bathsheba see
  him playing the flute; in this resolve showing a discretion equal to
  that related to its sagacious inventress, the divine Minerva herself.
  
  "Ah, when I and my wife were married at Norcombe Church," said the
  old maltster, not pleased at finding himself left out of the subject,
  "we were called the handsomest couple in the neighbourhood--everybody
  said so."
  
  "Danged if ye bain't altered now, malter," said a voice with the
  vigour natural to the enunciation of a remarkably evident truism.
  It came from the old man in the background, whose offensiveness and
  spiteful ways were barely atoned for by the occasional chuckle he
  contributed to general laughs.
  
  "O no, no," said Gabriel.
  
  "Don't ye play no more shepherd" said Susan Tall's husband, the young
  married man who had spoken once before.  "I must be moving and when
  there's tunes going on I seem as if hung in wires.  If I thought
  after I'd left that music was still playing, and I not there, I
  should be quite melancholy-like."
  
  "What's yer hurry then, Laban?" inquired Coggan.  "You used to bide
  as late as the latest."
  
  "Well, ye see, neighbours, I was lately married to a woman, and she's
  my vocation now, and so ye see--"  The young man halted lamely.
  
  "New Lords new laws, as the saying is, I suppose," remarked Coggan.
  
  "Ay, 'a b'lieve--ha, ha!" said Susan Tall's husband, in a tone
  intended to imply his habitual reception of jokes without minding
  them at all.  The young man then wished them good-night and withdrew.
  
  Henery Fray was the first to follow.  Then Gabriel arose and went off
  with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging.  A few minutes later,
  when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray
  came back again in a hurry.  Flourishing his finger ominously he
  threw a gaze teeming with tidings just where his eye alighted by
  accident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass's face.
  
  "O--what's the matter, what's the matter, Henery?" said Joseph,
  starting back.
  
  "What's a-brewing, Henrey?" asked Jacob and Mark Clark.
  
  "Baily Pennyways--Baily Pennyways--I said so; yes, I said so!"
  
  "What, found out stealing anything?"
  
  "Stealing it is.  The news is, that after Miss Everdene got home she
  went out again to see all was safe, as she usually do, and coming in
  found Baily Pennyways creeping down the granary steps with half a a
  bushel of barley.  She fleed at him like a cat--never such a tomboy
  as she is--of course I speak with closed doors?"
  
  "You do--you do, Henery."
  
  "She fleed at him, and, to cut a long story short, he owned to having
  carried off five sack altogether, upon her promising not to persecute
  him.  Well, he's turned out neck and crop, and my question is, who's
  going to be baily now?"
  
  The question was such a profound one that Henery was obliged to drink
  there and then from the large cup till the bottom was distinctly
  visible inside.  Before he had replaced it on the table, in came the
  young man, Susan Tall's husband, in a still greater hurry.
  
  "Have ye heard the news that's all over parish?"
  
  "About Baily Pennyways?"
  
  "But besides that?"
  
  "No--not a morsel of it!" they replied, looking into the very midst
  of Laban Tall as if to meet his words half-way down his throat.
  
  "What a night of horrors!" murmured Joseph Poorgrass, waving his
  hands spasmodically.  "I've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear
  quite bad enough for a murder, and I've seen a magpie all alone!"
  
  "Fanny Robin--Miss Everdene's youngest servant--can't be found.
  They've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she
  isn't come in.  And they don't know what to do about going to bed for
  fear of locking her out.  They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't
  been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d'
  think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor
  girl."
  
  "Oh--'tis burned--'tis burned!" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry
  lips.
  
  "No--'tis drowned!" said Tall.
  
  "Or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid
  sense of detail.
  
  "Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go
  to bed.  What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the
  girl, mis'ess is almost wild."
  
  They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old
  maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from
  his hole.  There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down
  again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red,
  bleared eyes.
  
  From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and
  shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the
  air.
  
  "Are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously.
  
  "Yes, ma'am, several," said Susan Tall's husband.
  
  "To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in
  the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin.
  Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet.  She must have
  left whilst we were all at the fire."
  
  "I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the
  parish, ma'am?" asked Jacob Smallbury.
  
  "I don't know," said Bathsheba.
  
  "I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am," said two or three.
  
  "It is hardly likely, either," continued Bathsheba.  "For any lover
  of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable
  lad.  The most mysterious matter connected with her absence--indeed,
  the only thing which gives me serious alarm--is that she was seen
  to go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown
  on--not even a bonnet."
  
  "And you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would
  hardly go to see her young man without dressing up," said Jacob,
  turning his mental vision upon past experiences.  "That's true--she
  would not, ma'am."
  
  "She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn't see very well," said a
  female voice from another window, which seemed that of Maryann.  "But
  she had no young man about here.  Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I
  believe he's a soldier."
  
  "Do you know his name?" Bathsheba said.
  
  "No, mistress; she was very close about it."
  
  "Perhaps I might be able to find out if I went to Casterbridge
  barracks," said William Smallbury.
  
  "Very well; if she doesn't return to-morrow, mind you go there and try
  to discover which man it is, and see him.  I feel more responsible
  than I should if she had had any friends or relations alive.  I do
  hope she has come to no harm through a man of that kind....  And then
  there's this disgraceful affair of the bailiff--but I can't speak of
  him now."
  
  Bathsheba had so many reasons for uneasiness that it seemed she did
  not think it worth while to dwell upon any particular one.  "Do as I
  told you, then," she said in conclusion, closing the casement.
  
  "Ay, ay, mistress; we will," they replied, and moved away.
  
  That night at Coggan's, Gabriel Oak, beneath the screen of closed
  eyelids, was busy with fancies, and full of movement, like a river
  flowing rapidly under its ice.  Night had always been the time at
  which he saw Bathsheba most vividly, and through the slow hours
  of shadow he tenderly regarded her image now.  It is rarely that
  the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of
  sleeplessness, but they possibly did with Oak to-night, for the
  delight of merely seeing her effaced for the time his perception
  of the great difference between seeing and possessing.
  
  He also thought of plans for fetching his few utensils and books from
  Norcombe.  _The Young Man's Best Companion_, _The Farrier's Sure
  Guide_, _The Veterinary Surgeon_, _Paradise Lost_, _The Pilgrim's
  Progress_, _Robinson Crusoe_, Ash's _Dictionary_, and Walkingame's
  _Arithmetic_, constituted his library; and though a limited series,
  it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by
  diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a
  furlong of laden shelves.
  
  
  
  
  
  THE HOMESTEAD--A VISITOR--HALF-CONFIDENCES
  
  
  By daylight, the bower of Oak's new-found mistress, Bathsheba
  Everdene, presented itself as a hoary building, of the early stage of
  Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion
  which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had
  once been the memorial hall upon a small estate around it, now
  altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast
  tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest
  demesnes.
  
  Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front,
  and above the roof the chimneys were panelled or columnar, some coped
  gables with finials and like features still retaining traces of their
  Gothic extraction.  Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed
  cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the houseleek or
  sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings.  A
  gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted
  at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the
  nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot
  or two in the centre.  This circumstance, and the generally sleepy
  air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and
  contrasting state of the reverse facade, suggested to the imagination
  that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the
  vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to
  face the other way.  Reversals of this kind, strange deformities,
  tremendous paralyses, are often seen to be inflicted by trade upon
  edifices--either individual or in the aggregate as streets and
  towns--which were originally planned for pleasure alone.
  
  Lively voices were heard this morning in the upper rooms, the
  main staircase to which was of hard oak, the balusters, heavy as
  bed-posts, being turned and moulded in the quaint fashion of their
  century, the handrail as stout as a parapet-top, and the stairs
  themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look
  over his shoulder.  Going up, the floors above were found to have a
  very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and
  being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be
  eaten into innumerable vermiculations.  Every window replied by a
  clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed
  every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the
  house, like a spirit, wherever he went.
  
  In the room from which the conversation proceeded Bathsheba and her
  servant-companion, Liddy Smallbury, were to be discovered sitting
  upon the floor, and sorting a complication of papers, books, bottles,
  and rubbish spread out thereon--remnants from the household stores
  of the late occupier.  Liddy, the maltster's great-granddaughter,
  was about Bathsheba's equal in age, and her face was a prominent
  advertisement of the light-hearted English country girl.  The beauty
  her features might have lacked in form was amply made up for by
  perfection of hue, which at this winter-time was the softened
  ruddiness on a surface of high rotundity that we meet with in a
  Terburg or a Gerard Douw; and, like the presentations of those great
  colourists, it was a face which kept well back from the boundary
  between comeliness and the ideal.  Though elastic in nature she was
  less daring than Bathsheba, and occasionally showed some earnestness,
  which consisted half of genuine feeling, and half of mannerliness
  superadded by way of duty.
  
  Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to
  the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular
  disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at
  distant objects.  To think of her was to get good-humoured; to speak
  of her was to raise the image of a dried Normandy pippin.
  
  "Stop your scrubbing a moment," said Bathsheba through the door to
  her.  "I hear something."
  
  Maryann suspended the brush.
  
  The tramp of a horse was apparent, approaching the front of the
  building.  The paces slackened, turned in at the wicket, and, what
  was most unusual, came up the mossy path close to the door.  The door
  was tapped with the end of a crop or stick.
  
  "What impertinence!" said Liddy, in a low voice.  "To ride up the
  footpath like that!  Why didn't he stop at the gate? Lord!  'Tis a
  gentleman!  I see the top of his hat."
  
  "Be quiet!" said Bathsheba.
  
  The further expression of Liddy's concern was continued by aspect
  instead of narrative.
  
  "Why doesn't Mrs. Coggan go to the door?" Bathsheba continued.
  
  Rat-tat-tat-tat resounded more decisively from Bathsheba's oak.
  
  "Maryann, you go!" said she, fluttering under the onset of a crowd of
  romantic possibilities.
  
  "Oh ma'am--see, here's a mess!"
  
  The argument was unanswerable after a glance at Maryann.
  
  "Liddy--you must," said Bathsheba.
  
  Liddy held up her hands and arms, coated with dust from the rubbish
  they were sorting, and looked imploringly at her mistress.
  
  "There--Mrs. Coggan is going!" said Bathsheba, exhaling her relief
  in the form of a long breath which had lain in her bosom a minute or
  more.
  
  The door opened, and a deep voice said--
  
  "Is Miss Everdene at home?"
  
  "I'll see, sir," said Mrs. Coggan, and in a minute appeared in the
  room.
  
  "Dear, what a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan
  (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark
  according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl
  a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment
  showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with
  flour).  "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but
  one of two things do happen--either my nose must needs begin
  tickling, and I can't live without scratching it, or somebody knocks
  at the door.  Here's Mr. Boldwood wanting to see you, Miss Everdene."
  
  A woman's dress being a part of her countenance, and any disorder in
  the one being of the same nature with a malformation or wound in the
  other, Bathsheba said at once--
  
  "I can't see him in this state.  Whatever shall I do?"
  
  Not-at-homes were hardly naturalized in Weatherbury farmhouses, so
  Liddy suggested--"Say you're a fright with dust, and can't come
  down."
  
  "Yes--that sounds very well," said Mrs. Coggan, critically.
  
  "Say I can't see him--that will do."
  
  Mrs. Coggan went downstairs, and returned the answer as requested,
  adding, however, on her own responsibility, "Miss is dusting bottles,
  sir, and is quite a object--that's why 'tis."
  
  "Oh, very well," said the deep voice indifferently.  "All I wanted to
  ask was, if anything had been heard of Fanny Robin?"
  
  "Nothing, sir--but we may know to-night.  William Smallbury is gone
  to Casterbridge, where her young man lives, as is supposed, and the
  other men be inquiring about everywhere."
  
  The horse's tramp then recommenced and retreated, and the door
  closed.
  
  "Who is Mr. Boldwood?" said Bathsheba.
  
  "A gentleman-farmer at Little Weatherbury."
  
  "Married?"
  
  "No, miss."
  
  "How old is he?"
  
  "Forty, I should say--very handsome--rather stern-looking--and rich."
  
  "What a bother this dusting is!  I am always in some unfortunate
  plight or other," Bathsheba said, complainingly.  "Why should he
  inquire about Fanny?"
  
  "Oh, because, as she had no friends in her childhood, he took her and
  put her to school, and got her her place here under your uncle.  He's
  a very kind man that way, but Lord--there!"
  
  "What?"
  
  "Never was such a hopeless man for a woman!  He's been courted by
  sixes and sevens--all the girls, gentle and simple, for miles round,
  have tried him.  Jane Perkins worked at him for two months like a
  slave, and the two Miss Taylors spent a year upon him, and he cost
  Farmer Ives's daughter nights of tears and twenty pounds' worth of
  new clothes; but Lord--the money might as well have been thrown out
  of the window."
  
  A little boy came up at this moment and looked in upon them.  This
  child was one of the Coggans, who, with the Smallburys, were as
  common among the families of this district as the Avons and Derwents
  among our rivers.  He always had a loosened tooth or a cut finger to
  show to particular friends, which he did with an air of being thereby
  elevated above the common herd of afflictionless humanity--to which
  exhibition people were expected to say "Poor child!" with a dash of
  congratulation as well as pity.
  
  "I've got a pen-nee!" said Master Coggan in a scanning measure.
  
  "Well--who gave it you, Teddy?" said Liddy.
  
  "Mis-terr Bold-wood!  He gave it to me for opening the gate."
  
  "What did he say?"
  
  "He said, 'Where are you going, my little man?' and I said, 'To Miss
  Everdene's please,' and he said, 'She is a staid woman, isn't she, my
  little man?' and I said, 'Yes.'"
  
  "You naughty child!  What did you say that for?"
  
  "'Cause he gave me the penny!"
  
  "What a pucker everything is in!" said Bathsheba, discontentedly
  when the child had gone.  "Get away, Maryann, or go on with your
  scrubbing, or do something!  You ought to be married by this time,
  and not here troubling me!"
  
  "Ay, mistress--so I did.  But what between the poor men I won't have,
  and the rich men who won't have me, I stand as a pelican in the
  wilderness!"
  
  "Did anybody ever want to marry you miss?" Liddy ventured to ask when
  they were again alone.  "Lots of 'em, I daresay?"
  
  Bathsheba paused, as if about to refuse a reply, but the temptation
  to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by
  aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at having been published
  as old.
  
  "A man wanted to once," she said, in a highly experienced tone, and
  the image of Gabriel Oak, as the farmer, rose before her.
  
  "How nice it must seem!" said Liddy, with the fixed features of
  mental realization.  "And you wouldn't have him?"
  
  "He wasn't quite good enough for me."
  
  "How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say,
  'Thank you!'  I seem I hear it.  'No, sir--I'm your better.' or 'Kiss
  my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence.'  And did you
  love him, miss?"
  
  "Oh, no.  But I rather liked him."
  
  "Do you now?"
  
  "Of course not--what footsteps are those I hear?"
  
  Liddy looked from a back window into the courtyard behind, which was
  now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night.  A
  crooked file of men was approaching the back door.  The whole string
  of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of
  intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which,
  distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common to a
  whole family.  Some were, as usual, in snow-white smock-frocks of
  Russia duck, and some in whitey-brown ones of drabbet--marked on the
  wrists, breasts, backs, and sleeves with honeycomb-work.  Two or
  three women in pattens brought up the rear.
  
  "The Philistines be upon us," said Liddy, making her nose white
  against the glass.
  
  "Oh, very well.  Maryann, go down and keep them in the kitchen till I
  am dressed, and then show them in to me in the hall."
  
  
  
  
  
  MISTRESS AND MEN
  
  
  Half-an-hour later Bathsheba, in finished dress, and followed by
  Liddy, entered the upper end of the old hall to find that her men had
  all deposited themselves on a long form and a settle at the lower
  extremity.  She sat down at a table and opened the time-book, pen in
  her hand, with a canvas money-bag beside her.  From this she poured
  a small heap of coin.  Liddy chose a position at her elbow and began
  to sew, sometimes pausing and looking round, or, with the air of
  a privileged person, taking up one of the half-sovereigns lying
  before her and surveying it merely as a work of art, while strictly
  preventing her countenance from expressing any wish to possess it as
  money.
  
  "Now before I begin, men," said Bathsheba, "I have two matters to
  speak of.  The first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving,
  and that I have formed a resolution to have no bailiff at all, but to
  manage everything with my own head and hands."
  
  The men breathed an audible breath of amazement.
  
  "The next matter is, have you heard anything of Fanny?"
  
  "Nothing, ma'am."
  
  "Have you done anything?"
  
  "I met Farmer Boldwood," said Jacob Smallbury, "and I went with him
  and two of his men, and dragged Newmill Pond, but we found nothing."
  
  "And the new shepherd have been to Buck's Head, by Yalbury, thinking
  she had gone there, but nobody had seed her," said Laban Tall.
  
  "Hasn't William Smallbury been to Casterbridge?"
  
  "Yes, ma'am, but he's not yet come home.  He promised to be back by
  six."
  
  "It wants a quarter to six at present," said Bathsheba, looking at
  her watch.  "I daresay he'll be in directly.  Well, now then"--she
  looked into the book--"Joseph Poorgrass, are you there?"
  
  "Yes, sir--ma'am I mane," said the person addressed.  "I be the
  personal name of Poorgrass."
  
  "And what are you?"
  
  "Nothing in my own eye.  In the eye of other people--well, I don't
  say it; though public thought will out."
  
  "What do you do on the farm?"
  
  "I do do carting things all the year, and in seed time I shoots the
  rooks and sparrows, and helps at pig-killing, sir."
  
  "How much to you?"
  
  "Please nine and ninepence and a good halfpenny where 'twas a bad
  one, sir--ma'am I mane."
  
  "Quite correct.  Now here are ten shillings in addition as a small
  present, as I am a new comer."
  
  Bathsheba blushed slightly at the sense of being generous in public,
  and Henery Fray, who had drawn up towards her chair, lifted his
  eyebrows and fingers to express amazement on a small scale.
  
  "How much do I owe you--that man in the corner--what's your name?"
  continued Bathsheba.
  
  "Matthew Moon, ma'am," said a singular framework of clothes with
  nothing of any consequence inside them, which advanced with the toes
  in no definite direction forwards, but turned in or out as they
  chanced to swing.
  
  "Matthew Mark, did you say?--speak out--I shall not hurt you,"
  inquired the young farmer, kindly.
  
  "Matthew Moon, mem," said Henery Fray, correctingly, from behind her
  chair, to which point he had edged himself.
  
  "Matthew Moon," murmured Bathsheba, turning her bright eyes to the
  book.  "Ten and twopence halfpenny is the sum put down to you, I
  see?"
  
  "Yes, mis'ess," said Matthew, as the rustle of wind among dead
  leaves.
  
  "Here it is, and ten shillings.  Now the next--Andrew Randle, you are
  a new man, I hear.  How come you to leave your last farm?"
  
  "P-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-l-l-l-l-ease, ma'am, p-p-p-p-pl-pl-pl-pl-please,
  ma'am-please'm-please'm--"
  
  "'A's a stammering man, mem," said Henery Fray in an undertone, "and
  they turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain
  he said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire.
  'A can cuss, mem, as well as you or I, but 'a can't speak a common
  speech to save his life."
  
  "Andrew Randle, here's yours--finish thanking me in a day or two.
  Temperance Miller--oh, here's another, Soberness--both women I
  suppose?"
  
  "Yes'm.  Here we be, 'a b'lieve," was echoed in shrill unison.
  
  "What have you been doing?"
  
  "Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying 'Hoosh!'
  to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting
  Early Flourballs and Thompson's Wonderfuls with a dibble."
  
  "Yes--I see.  Are they satisfactory women?" she inquired softly of
  Henery Fray.
  
  "Oh mem--don't ask me!  Yielding women--as scarlet a pair as ever
  was!" groaned Henery under his breath.
  
  "Sit down."
  
  "Who, mem?"
  
  "Sit down."
  
  Joseph Poorgrass, in the background twitched, and his lips became
  dry with fear of some terrible consequences, as he saw Bathsheba
  summarily speaking, and Henery slinking off to a corner.
  
  "Now the next.  Laban Tall, you'll stay on working for me?"
  
  "For you or anybody that pays me well, ma'am," replied the young
  married man.
  
  "True--the man must live!" said a woman in the back quarter, who had
  just entered with clicking pattens.
  
  "What woman is that?" Bathsheba asked.
  
  "I be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater prominence
  of manner and tone.  This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked
  thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty.  She was a woman who
  never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public,
  perhaps because she had none to show.
  
  "Oh, you are," said Bathsheba.  "Well, Laban, will you stay on?"
  
  "Yes, he'll stay, ma'am!" said again the shrill tongue of Laban's
  lawful wife.
  
  "Well, he can speak for himself, I suppose."
  
  "Oh Lord, not he, ma'am!  A simple tool.  Well enough, but a poor
  gawkhammer mortal," the wife replied.
  
  "Heh-heh-heh!" laughed the married man with a hideous effort of
  appreciation, for he was as irrepressibly good-humoured under ghastly
  snubs as a parliamentary candidate on the hustings.
  
  The names remaining were called in the same manner.
  
  "Now I think I have done with you," said Bathsheba, closing the book
  and shaking back a stray twine of hair.  "Has William Smallbury
  returned?"
  
  "No, ma'am."
  
  "The new shepherd will want a man under him," suggested Henery Fray,
  trying to make himself official again by a sideway approach towards
  her chair.
  
  "Oh--he will.  Who can he have?"
  
  "Young Cain Ball is a very good lad," Henery said, "and Shepherd Oak
  don't mind his youth?" he added, turning with an apologetic smile to
  the shepherd, who had just appeared on the scene, and was now leaning
  against the doorpost with his arms folded.
  
  "No, I don't mind that," said Gabriel.
  
  "How did Cain come by such a name?" asked Bathsheba.
  
  "Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman,
  made a mistake at his christening, thinking 'twas Abel killed Cain,
  and called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time.  The parson put it
  right, but 'twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in
  the parish.  'Tis very unfortunate for the boy."
  
  "It is rather unfortunate."
  
  "Yes.  However, we soften it down as much as we can, and call him
  Cainy.  Ah, pore widow-woman! she cried her heart out about it
  almost.  She was brought up by a very heathen father and mother, who
  never sent her to church or school, and it shows how the sins of the
  parents are visited upon the children, mem."
  
  Mr. Fray here drew up his features to the mild degree of melancholy
  required when the persons involved in the given misfortune do not
  belong to your own family.
  
  "Very well then, Cainey Ball to be under-shepherd.  And you quite
  understand your duties?--you I mean, Gabriel Oak?"
  
  "Quite well, I thank you, Miss Everdene," said Shepherd Oak from the
  doorpost.  "If I don't, I'll inquire."  Gabriel was rather staggered
  by the remarkable coolness of her manner.  Certainly nobody without
  previous information would have dreamt that Oak and the handsome
  woman before whom he stood had ever been other than strangers.  But
  perhaps her air was the inevitable result of the social rise which
  had advanced her from a cottage to a large house and fields.  The
  case is not unexampled in high places.  When, in the writings of the
  later poets, Jove and his family are found to have moved from their
  cramped quarters on the peak of Olympus into the wide sky above it,
  their words show a proportionate increase of arrogance and reserve.
  
  Footsteps were heard in the passage, combining in their character
  the qualities both of weight and measure, rather at the expense of
  velocity.
  
  (All.) "Here's Billy Smallbury come from Casterbridge."
  
  "And what's the news?" said Bathsheba, as William, after marching to
  the middle of the hall, took a handkerchief from his hat and wiped
  his forehead from its centre to its remoter boundaries.
  
  "I should have been sooner, miss," he said, "if it hadn't been for
  the weather."  He then stamped with each foot severely, and on
  looking down his boots were perceived to be clogged with snow.
  
  "Come at last, is it?" said Henery.
  
  "Well, what about Fanny?" said Bathsheba.
  
  "Well, ma'am, in round numbers, she's run away with the soldiers,"
  said William.
  
  "No; not a steady girl like Fanny!"
  
  "I'll tell ye all particulars.  When I got to Casterbridge Barracks,
  they said, 'The Eleventh Dragoon-Guards be gone away, and new troops
  have come.' The Eleventh left last week for Melchester and onwards.
  The Route came from Government like a thief in the night, as is his
  nature to, and afore the Eleventh knew it almost, they were on the
  march.  They passed near here."
  
  Gabriel had listened with interest.  "I saw them go," he said.
  
  "Yes," continued William, "they pranced down the street playing 'The
  Girl I Left Behind Me,' so 'tis said, in glorious notes of triumph.
  Every looker-on's inside shook with the blows of the great drum to
  his deepest vitals, and there was not a dry eye throughout the town
  among the public-house people and the nameless women!"
  
  "But they're not gone to any war?"
  
  "No, ma'am; but they be gone to take the places of them who may,
  which is very close connected.  And so I said to myself, Fanny's
  young man was one of the regiment, and she's gone after him.  There,
  ma'am, that's it in black and white."
  
  "Did you find out his name?"
  
  "No; nobody knew it.  I believe he was higher in rank than a
  private."
  
  Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt.
  
  "Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate,"
  said Bathsheba.  "But one of you had better run across to Farmer
  Boldwood's and tell him that much."
  
  She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them
  with a pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness
  that was hardly to be found in the words themselves.
  
  "Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't yet know
  my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if
  you serve me well, so shall I serve you.  Don't any unfair ones among
  you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I'm
  a woman I don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and
  good."
  
  (All.) "No'm!"
  
  (Liddy.) "Excellent well said."
  
  "I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are
  up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield.  In short, I
  shall astonish you all."
  
  (All.) "Yes'm!"
  
  "And so good-night."
  
  (All.) "Good-night, ma'am."
  
  Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of
  the hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging
  them along with a scratching noise upon the floor.  Liddy, elevating
  her feelings to the occasion from a sense of grandeur, floated
  off behind Bathsheba with a milder dignity not entirely free from
  travesty, and the door was closed.
  
  
  
  
  
  OUTSIDE THE BARRACKS--SNOW--A MEETING
  
  
  For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a
  certain town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury,
  at a later hour on this same snowy evening--if that may be called a
  prospect of which the chief constituent was darkness.
  
  It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing
  any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love
  becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope:
  when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at
  opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation
  does not prompt to enterprise.
  
  The scene was a public path, bordered on the left hand by a river,
  behind which rose a high wall.  On the right was a tract of land,
  partly meadow and partly moor, reaching, at its remote verge, to a
  wide undulating upland.
  
  The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this
  kind than amid woodland scenery.  Still, to a close observer, they
  are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of
  manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones
  as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf.  Many are not
  so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering
  the general torpidity of a moor or waste.  Winter, in coming to the
  country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might
  have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the
  transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of
  fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an
  obliteration by snow.
  
  This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid
  moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were
  forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing,
  and without more character than that of being the limit of something
  else--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow.  From this chaotic
  skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received
  additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.
  The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were
  the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor;
  for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and
  that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any
  intervening stratum of air at all.
  
  We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were
  flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall
  behind it, and darkness as to both.  These features made up the mass.
  If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any
  thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath.  The
  indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys
  here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong
  shapes of windows, though only in the upper part.  Below, down to the
  water's edge, the flat was unbroken by hole or projection.
  
  An indescribable succession of dull blows, perplexing in their
  regularity, sent their sound with difficulty through the fluffy
  atmosphere.  It was a neighbouring clock striking ten.  The bell was
  in the open air, and being overlaid with several inches of muffling
  snow, had lost its voice for the time.
  
  About this hour the snow abated: ten flakes fell where twenty had
  fallen, then one had the room of ten.  Not long after a form moved
  by the brink of the river.
  
  By its outline upon the colourless background, a close observer
  might have seen that it was small.  This was all that was positively
  discoverable, though it seemed human.
  
  The shape went slowly along, but without much exertion, for the snow,
  though sudden, was not as yet more than two inches deep.  At this
  time some words were spoken aloud:--
  
  "One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five."
  
  Between each utterance the little shape advanced about half a dozen
  yards.  It was evident now that the windows high in the wall were
  being counted.  The word "Five" represented the fifth window from the
  end of the wall.
  
  Here the spot stopped, and dwindled smaller.  The figure was
  stooping.  Then a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the
  fifth window.  It smacked against the wall at a point several yards
  from its mark.  The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the
  execution of a woman.  No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or
  squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter
  imbecility as was shown here.
  
  Another attempt, and another; till by degrees the wall must have
  become pimpled with the adhering lumps of snow.  At last one fragment
  struck the fifth window.
  
  The river would have been seen by day to be of that deep smooth sort
  which races middle and sides with the same gliding precision, any
  irregularities of speed being immediately corrected by a small
  whirlpool.  Nothing was heard in reply to the signal but the gurgle
  and cluck of one of these invisible wheels--together with a few small
  sounds which a sad man would have called moans, and a happy man
  laughter--caused by the flapping of the waters against trifling
  objects in other parts of the stream.
  
  The window was struck again in the same manner.
  
  Then a noise was heard, apparently produced by the opening of the
  window.  This was followed by a voice from the same quarter.
  
  "Who's there?"
  
  The tones were masculine, and not those of surprise.  The high
  wall being that of a barrack, and marriage being looked upon with
  disfavour in the army, assignations and communications had probably
  been made across the river before to-night.
  
  "Is it Sergeant Troy?" said the blurred spot in the snow,
  tremulously.
  
  This person was so much like a mere shade upon the earth, and the
  other speaker so much a part of the building, that one would have
  said the wall was holding a conversation with the snow.
  
  "Yes," came suspiciously from the shadow. "What girl are you?"
  
  "Oh, Frank--don't you know me?" said the spot.  "Your wife, Fanny
  Robin."
  
  "Fanny!" said the wall, in utter astonishment.
  
  "Yes," said the girl, with a half-suppressed gasp of emotion.
  
  There was something in the woman's tone which is not that of the
  wife, and there was a manner in the man which is rarely a husband's.
  The dialogue went on:
  
  "How did you come here?"
  
  "I asked which was your window.  Forgive me!"
  
  "I did not expect you to-night.  Indeed, I did not think you would
  come at all.  It was a wonder you found me here.  I am orderly
  to-morrow."
  
  "You said I was to come."
  
  "Well--I said that you might."
  
  "Yes, I mean that I might.  You are glad to see me, Frank?"
  
  "Oh yes--of course."
  
  "Can you--come to me!"
  
  "My dear Fan, no!  The bugle has sounded, the barrack gates are
  closed, and I have no leave.  We are all of us as good as in the
  county gaol till to-morrow morning."
  
  "Then I shan't see you till then!"  The words were in a faltering
  tone of disappointment.
  
  "How did you get here from Weatherbury?"
  
  "I walked--some part of the way--the rest by the carriers."
  
  "I am surprised."
  
  "Yes--so am I.  And Frank, when will it be?"
  
  "What?"
  
  "That you promised."
  
  "I don't quite recollect."
  
  "O you do!  Don't speak like that.  It weighs me to the earth.  It
  makes me say what ought to be said first by you."
  
  "Never mind--say it."
  
  "O, must I?--it is, when shall we be married, Frank?"
  
  "Oh, I see.  Well--you have to get proper clothes."
  
  "I have money.  Will it be by banns or license?"
  
  "Banns, I should think."
  
  "And we live in two parishes."
  
  "Do we?  What then?"
  
  "My lodgings are in St. Mary's, and this is not.  So they will have
  to be published in both."
  
  "Is that the law?"
  
  "Yes.  O Frank--you think me forward, I am afraid!  Don't, dear
  Frank--will you--for I love you so.  And you said lots of times you
  would marry me, and--and--I--I--I--"
  
  "Don't cry, now!  It is foolish.  If I said so, of course I will."
  
  "And shall I put up the banns in my parish, and will you in yours?"
  
  "Yes"
  
  "To-morrow?"
  
  "Not to-morrow.  We'll settle in a few days."
  
  "You have the permission of the officers?"
  
  "No, not yet."
  
  "O--how is it?  You said you almost had before you left
  Casterbridge."
  
  "The fact is, I forgot to ask.  Your coming like this is so sudden
  and unexpected."
  
  "Yes--yes--it is.  It was wrong of me to worry you.  I'll go away
  now.  Will you come and see me to-morrow, at Mrs. Twills's, in North
  Street?  I don't like to come to the Barracks.  There are bad women
  about, and they think me one."
  
  "Quite, so.  I'll come to you, my dear.  Good-night."
  
  "Good-night, Frank--good-night!"
  
  And the noise was again heard of a window closing.  The little spot
  moved away.  When she passed the corner a subdued exclamation was
  heard inside the wall.
  
  "Ho--ho--Sergeant--ho--ho!" An  expostulation followed, but it was
  indistinct; and it became lost amid a low peal of laughter, which was
  hardly distinguishable from the gurgle of the tiny whirlpools
  outside.
  
  
  
  
  
  FARMERS--A RULE--AN EXCEPTION
  
  
  The first public evidence of Bathsheba's decision to be a farmer in
  her own person and by proxy no more was her appearance the following
  market-day in the cornmarket at Casterbridge.
  
  The low though extensive hall, supported by beams and pillars,
  and latterly dignified by the name of Corn Exchange, was thronged
  with hot men who talked among each other in twos and threes, the
  speaker of the minute looking sideways into his auditor's face and
  concentrating his argument by a contraction of one eyelid during
  delivery.  The greater number carried in their hands ground-ash
  saplings, using them partly as walking-sticks and partly for poking
  up pigs, sheep, neighbours with their backs turned, and restful
  things in general, which seemed to require such treatment in the
  course of their peregrinations.  During conversations each subjected
  his sapling to great varieties of usage--bending it round his back,
  forming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the
  ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily
  tucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a
  handful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was
  flung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to
  half-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the
  building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations
  with a high-stretched neck and oblique eye.
  
  Among these heavy yeomen a feminine figure glided, the single one of
  her sex that the room contained.  She was prettily and even daintily
  dressed.  She moved between them as a chaise between carts, was heard
  after them as a romance after sermons, was felt among them like a
  breeze among furnaces.  It had required a little determination--far
  more than she had at first imagined--to take up a position here, for
  at her first entry the lumbering dialogues had ceased, nearly every
  face had been turned towards her, and those that were already turned
  rigidly fixed there.
  
  Two or three only of the farmers were personally known to Bathsheba,
  and to these she had made her way.  But if she was to be the
  practical woman she had intended to show herself, business must
  be carried on, introductions or none, and she ultimately acquired
  confidence enough to speak and reply boldly to men merely known to
  her by hearsay.  Bathsheba too had her sample-bags, and by degrees
  adopted the professional pour into the hand--holding up the grains
  in her narrow palm for inspection, in perfect Casterbridge manner.
  
  Something in the exact arch of her upper unbroken row of teeth, and
  in the keenly pointed corners of her red mouth when, with parted
  lips, she somewhat defiantly turned up her face to argue a point with
  a tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that
  lithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring
  enough to carry them out.  But her eyes had a softness--invariably a
  softness--which, had they not been dark, would have seemed mistiness;
  as they were, it lowered an expression that might have been piercing
  to simple clearness.
  
  Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed
  her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with
  hers.  In arguing on prices, she held to her own firmly, as was
  natural in a dealer, and reduced theirs persistently, as was
  inevitable in a woman.  But there was an elasticity in her firmness
  which removed it from obstinacy, as there was a _naivete_ in her
  cheapening which saved it from meanness.
  
  Those of the farmers with whom she had no dealings (by far the
  greater part) were continually asking each other, "Who is she?"
  The reply would be--
  
  "Farmer Everdene's niece; took on Weatherbury Upper Farm; turned away
  the baily, and swears she'll do everything herself."
  
  The other man would then shake his head.
  
  "Yes, 'tis a pity she's so headstrong," the first would say.  "But we
  ought to be proud of her here--she lightens up the old place.  'Tis
  such a shapely maid, however, that she'll soon get picked up."
  
  It would be ungallant to suggest that the novelty of her engagement
  in such an occupation had almost as much to do with the magnetism
  as had the beauty of her face and movements.  However, the interest
  was general, and this Saturday's _debut_ in the forum, whatever it
  may have been to Bathsheba as the buying and selling farmer, was
  unquestionably a triumph to her as the maiden.  Indeed, the sensation
  was so pronounced that her instinct on two or three occasions was
  merely to walk as a queen among these gods of the fallow, like a
  little sister of a little Jove, and to neglect closing prices
  altogether.
  
  The numerous evidences of her power to attract were only thrown into
  greater relief by a marked exception.  Women seem to have eyes in
  their ribbons for such matters as these.  Bathsheba, without looking
  within a right angle of him, was conscious of a black sheep among the
  flock.
  
  It perplexed her first.  If there had been a respectable minority on
  either side, the case would have been most natural.  If nobody had
  regarded her, she would have taken the matter indifferently--such
  cases had occurred.  If everybody, this man included, she would have
  taken it as a matter of course--people had done so before.  But the
  smallness of the exception made the mystery.
  
  She soon knew thus much of the recusant's appearance.  He was a
  gentlemanly man, with full and distinctly outlined Roman features,
  the prominences of which glowed in the sun with a bronze-like
  richness of tone.  He was erect in attitude, and quiet in demeanour.
  One characteristic pre-eminently marked him--dignity.
  
  Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age
  at which a man's aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of
  a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman's does likewise.
  Thirty-five and fifty were his limits of variation--he might have
  been either, or anywhere between the two.
  
  It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and
  generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen of moderate
  beauty they may discern by the way.  Probably, as with persons
  playing whist for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under
  any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to
  pay, makes them unduly speculative.  Bathsheba was convinced that
  this unmoved person was not a married man.
  
  When marketing was over, she rushed off to Liddy, who was waiting
  for her beside the yellow gig in which they had driven to town.
  The horse was put in, and on they trotted--Bathsheba's sugar, tea,
  and drapery parcels being packed behind, and expressing in some
  indescribable manner, by their colour, shape, and general lineaments,
  that they were that young lady-farmer's property, and the grocer's
  and draper's no more.
  
  "I've been through it, Liddy, and it is over.  I shan't mind it
  again, for they will all have grown accustomed to seeing me there;
  but this morning it was as bad as being married--eyes everywhere!"
  
  "I knowed it would be," Liddy said.  "Men be such a terrible class of
  society to look at a body."
  
  "But there was one man who had more sense than to waste his time upon
  me."  The information was put in this form that Liddy might not for a
  moment suppose her mistress was at all piqued.  "A very good-looking
  man," she continued, "upright; about forty, I should think.  Do you
  know at all who he could be?"
  
  Liddy couldn't think.
  
  "Can't you guess at all?" said Bathsheba with some disappointment.
  
  "I haven't a notion; besides, 'tis no difference, since he took less
  notice of you than any of the rest.  Now, if he'd taken more, it
  would have mattered a great deal."
  
  Bathsheba was suffering from the reverse feeling just then, and they
  bowled along in silence.  A low carriage, bowling along still more
  rapidly behind a horse of unimpeachable breed, overtook and passed
  them.
  
  "Why, there he is!" she said.
  
  Liddy looked.  "That!  That's Farmer Boldwood--of course 'tis--the
  man you couldn't see the other day when he called."
  
  "Oh, Farmer Boldwood," murmured Bathsheba, and looked at him as he
  outstripped them.  The farmer had never turned his head once, but
  with eyes fixed on the most advanced point along the road, passed as
  unconsciously and abstractedly as if Bathsheba and her charms were
  thin air.
  
  "He's an interesting man--don't you think so?" she remarked.
  
  "O yes, very.  Everybody owns it," replied Liddy.
  
  "I wonder why he is so wrapt up and indifferent, and seemingly so far
  away from all he sees around him."
  
  "It is said--but not known for certain--that he met with some bitter
  disappointment when he was a young man and merry.  A woman jilted
  him, they say."
  
  "People always say that--and we know very well women scarcely ever
  jilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us.  I expect it is simply his nature
  to be so reserved."
  
  "Simply his nature--I expect so, miss--nothing else in the world."
  
  "Still, 'tis more romantic to think he has been served cruelly, poor
  thing'!  Perhaps, after all, he has!"
  
  "Depend upon it he has.  Oh yes, miss, he has!  I feel he must have."
  
  "However, we are very apt to think extremes of people.  I shouldn't
  wonder after all if it wasn't a little of both--just between the
  two--rather cruelly used and rather reserved."
  
  "Oh dear no, miss--I can't think it between the two!"
  
  "That's most likely."
  
  "Well, yes, so it is.  I am convinced it is most likely. You may take
  my word, miss, that that's what's the matter with him."
  
  
  
  
  
  SORTES SANCTORUM--THE VALENTINE
  
  
  It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse, on the thirteenth of
  February.  Dinner being over, Bathsheba, for want of a better
  companion, had asked Liddy to come and sit with her.  The mouldy pile
  was dreary in winter-time before the candles were lighted and the
  shutters closed; the atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the
  walls; every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own,
  for the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the
  day; and Bathsheba's new piano, which was an old one in other annals,
  looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor
  before night threw a shade over its less prominent angles and hid
  the unpleasantness.  Liddy, like a little brook, though shallow, was
  always rippling; her presence had not so much weight as to task
  thought, and yet enough to exercise it.
  
  On the table lay an old quarto Bible, bound in leather.  Liddy
  looking at it said,--
  
  "Did you ever find out, miss, who you are going to marry by means of
  the Bible and key?"
  
  "Don't be so foolish, Liddy.  As if such things could be."
  
  "Well, there's a good deal in it, all the same."
  
  "Nonsense, child."
  
  "And it makes your heart beat fearful.  Some believe in it; some
  don't; I do."
  
  "Very well, let's try it," said Bathsheba, bounding from her seat
  with that total disregard of consistency which can be indulged in
  towards a dependent, and entering into the spirit of divination at
  once.  "Go and get the front door key."
  
  Liddy fetched it.  "I wish it wasn't Sunday," she said, on returning.
  "Perhaps 'tis wrong."
  
  "What's right week days is right Sundays," replied her mistress in a
  tone which was a proof in itself.
  
  The book was opened--the leaves, drab with age, being quite worn away
  at much-read verses by the forefingers of unpractised readers in
  former days, where they were moved along under the line as an aid to
  the vision.  The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by
  Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye.  They slightly thrilled
  and abashed her.  It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the
  concrete.  Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention,
  and placed the key on the book.  A rusty patch immediately upon the
  verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told
  that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the
  purpose.
  
  "Now keep steady, and be silent," said Bathsheba.
  
  The verse was repeated; the book turned round; Bathsheba blushed
  guiltily.
  
  "Who did you try?" said Liddy curiously.
  
  "I shall not tell you."
  
  "Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?"
  Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had
  taken.
  
  "No, indeed," said Bathsheba, with serene indifference.
  
  "His pew is exactly opposite yours, miss."
  
  "I know it."
  
  "And you did not see his goings on!"
  
  "Certainly I did not, I tell you."
  
  Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy, and shut her lips decisively.
  
  This move was unexpected, and proportionately disconcerting.  "What
  did he do?" Bathsheba said perforce.
  
  "Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service."
  
  "Why should he?" again demanded her mistress, wearing a nettled look.
  "I didn't ask him to."
  
  "Oh no.  But everybody else was noticing you; and it was odd he
  didn't.  There, 'tis like him.  Rich and gentlemanly, what does he
  care?"
  
  Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had
  opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension, rather
  than that she had nothing to say.
  
  "Dear me--I had nearly forgotten the valentine I bought yesterday,"
  she exclaimed at length.
  
  "Valentine! who for, miss?" said Liddy.  "Farmer Boldwood?"
  
  It was the single name among all possible wrong ones that just at
  this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right.
  
  "Well, no.  It is only for little Teddy Coggan.  I have promised him
  something, and this will be a pretty surprise for him.  Liddy, you
  may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once."
  
  Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed
  design in post-octavo, which had been bought on the previous
  market-day at the chief stationer's in Casterbridge.  In the centre
  was a small oval enclosure; this was left blank, that the sender
  might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion
  than any generalities by a printer could possibly be.
  
  "Here's a place for writing," said Bathsheba.  "What shall I put?"
  
  "Something of this sort, I should think," returned Liddy promptly:--
  
  
     "The rose is red,
     The violet blue,
     Carnation's sweet,
     And so are you."
  
  
  "Yes, that shall be it.  It just suits itself to a chubby-faced child
  like him," said Bathsheba.  She inserted the words in a small though
  legible handwriting; enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and dipped
  her pen for the direction.
  
  "What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how
  he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows,
  and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought
  of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated.
  
  Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length.  Boldwood's had
  begun to be a troublesome image--a species of Daniel in her kingdom
  who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said
  that he might just as well follow suit with the rest, and afford her
  the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all.  She was
  far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity.  Still,
  it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man
  in the parish should withhold his eyes, and that a girl like Liddy
  should talk about it.  So Liddy's idea was at first rather harassing
  than piquant.
  
  "No, I won't do that.  He wouldn't see any humour in it."
  
  "He'd worry to death," said the persistent Liddy.
  
  "Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy," remarked her
  mistress.  "He's rather a naughty child sometimes."
  
  "Yes--that he is."
  
  "Let's toss as men do," said Bathsheba, idly.  "Now then, head,
  Boldwood; tail, Teddy.  No, we won't toss money on a Sunday, that
  would be tempting the devil indeed."
  
  "Toss this hymn-book; there can't be no sinfulness in that, miss."
  
  "Very well.  Open, Boldwood--shut, Teddy.  No; it's more likely to
  fall open.  Open, Teddy--shut, Boldwood."
  
  The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut.
  
  Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen, and with
  off-hand serenity directed the missive to Boldwood.
  
  "Now light a candle, Liddy.  Which seal shall we use? Here's a
  unicorn's head--there's nothing in that.  What's this?--two
  doves--no.  It ought to be something extraordinary, ought it not,
  Liddy? Here's one with a motto--I remember it is some funny one, but
  I can't read it. We'll try this, and if it doesn't do we'll have
  another."
  
  A large red seal was duly affixed.  Bathsheba looked closely at the
  hot wax to discover the words.
  
  "Capital!" she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsomely.
  "'Twould upset the solemnity of a parson and clerke too."
  
  Liddy looked at the words of the seal, and read--
  
  
     "MARRY ME."
  
  
  The same evening the letter was sent, and was duly sorted in
  Casterbridge post-office that night, to be returned to Weatherbury
  again in the morning.
  
  So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done.  Of love as a
  spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively
  she knew nothing.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 5-13
target: Shortly after he proposes, Gabriel learns that Bathsheba has moved away to the town of Weatherbury. One night, Gabriel awakens to the sound of the sheep bells, indicating that the herd is running quickly. He gets up and finds that the 200 sheep who were still pregnant have been driven off the edge of a cliff by his young and overeager sheepdog. This loss is a financial catastrophe for Gabriel, and he has to sell everything he owns in order to pay off his remaining debts. The story resumes in February, in the town of Casterbridge, where a gathering is taking place for men looking for work to meet with prospective employers. Gabriel is there, eager to find work as either a bailiff or shepherd, but no one seems to want to hire him. He learns that another hiring fair is taking place the following day at Shottsford and decides to walk there, a journey which will take him through the town of Weatherbury. Along the way, he becomes tired and climbs into a wagon parked by the road in order to rest, only to awaken and find that the wagon is in motion. After he discreetly slips out of the wagon, Gabriel notices that some crops of straw are on fire at a nearby farm and that the fire is threatening to spread. Gabriel joins in to help the farmworkers control the fire, taking charge of the situation and providing effective leadership. Two women, one of whom owns the farm, observe Gabriel's hard work and send a message to him thanking him. Hoping to take advantage of this gratitude, Gabriel goes to ask if the farmer would like to hire him as a shepherd, only to realize that the owner of the farm is Bathsheba, who has inherited it from her uncle. The other farmworkers encourage her to hire Gabriel, and she agrees. As Gabriel makes his way towards accommodations for the night, he encounters a young woman walking alone. She gives him directions, and then asks that he not tell anyone he has seen her. Concerned, Gabriel gives her a small sum of money and then continues on his way. He arrives at the pub where the other farmworkers have gathered and is greeted warmly since some of the older men used to know his father and grandfather. After Gabriel has left for his room, one of the farmworkers comes hurrying in to break the news that the man working as the bailiff at Bathsheba's farm has been caught stealing and was fired from his job. What's more, Fanny Robbins, a young servant, cannot be found, and given that she has seemed depressed recently, her disappearance is alarming to Bathsheba. Several of the farmworkers go back to the farmhouse to speak with Bathsheba. She instructs them to look for Fanny the next day, including asking the soldiers at Casterbridge, since there are rumors that one of them was wooing Fanny. The next morning, Bathsheba and her servant Liddy are busy with household chores when they are surprised by the arrival of Mr. Boldwood, a prosperous farmer. Bathsheba declines to see him, since she is not dressed appropriately and Boldwood explains to the servant that he has come to ask whether any information had surfaced about Fanny's disappearance. After Boldwood departs, the other female servants explain that he is well-respected but also the subject of speculation since he has never shown any interest in getting married. After she has gotten ready, Bathsheba meets with the farmworkers to distribute their wages. She announces that she is not going to hire a new bailiff and instead plans to manage the farm herself. She also asks whether anyone has learned any news about Fanny and is informed that the regiment of soldiers previously stationed at Casterbridge has moved on to the town of Melchester, and it is assumed that Fanny has gone there as well, following her sweetheart. Bathsheba's hands-on approach is furthered signaled when she goes to the corn market to display the products of her farm, and negotiate prices with potential buyers. At the market, she is the subject of much male attention, but is surprised to notice one handsome man who does not seem intrigued by her at all. After questioning Liddy, she learns that this man is the same Farmer Boldwood who had previously called upon her. On the day before Valentine's, Liddy and Bathsheba are idly passing time and the conversation again turns to Boldwood, who had not taken any notice of Bathsheba during church services. Bathsheba mentions a valentine she is going to send to a young boy who works on the farm, and Liddy playfully suggests sending it to Boldwood instead. Bathsheba is intrigued by the idea, since she is slightly annoyed that Boldwood has shown no interest in her. They use the equivalent of a coin toss to determine the plan, and then send the anonymous valentine to Boldwood. Meanwhile, in Melchester, Fanny throws a stone at the windows of the soldier's barracks to get the attention of her lover, Sergeant Frank Troy. Troy is surprised to see her, but Fanny is anxious to hear details about when their planned marriage will take place. Frank assures her that he does plan to marry her, but that the logistical details will cause a delay. He promises to come and visit Fanny in her new lodgings as soon as possible.
feat_summary_analysis: Whereas Gabriel begins the novel at a hopeful moment with bright prospects for the future, his fortune is abruptly reversed with the loss of his flock. The loss is all the more glaring because Gabriel is such a careful and conscientious man; despite all of his efforts, everything can still be swept away. Hardy had a profound respect for nature, and the way in which nature can be both bountiful and destructive. At a moment literally ripe with promise, when the ewes are pregnant and therefore on the verge of doubling Gabriel's flock, the scene becomes one of death and grotesque destruction rather than birth and regeneration. Perhaps because Gabriel is a man attuned to the cycles of nature and the inevitable balance between growth and loss, or perhaps because he has previous experience as a humble laborer, he accepts his loss stoically. When he is at the hiring fair, Gabriel is open to accepting work as either a bailiff or a shepherd, even though the two roles were significantly different in social status and pay. The difficulty Gabriel finds in locating work reflects one of the consequences of his attempt at social mobility. He seems underqualified to work as a bailiff on one hand, but now overqualified to go back to being a shepherd since he has experience of working his own farm. However, Gabriel's innate integrity and desire to do the right thing helps to set him on the path to restoring his career. He has no obligation to help with putting out the fire, but he naturally shows leadership and good judgement, and is rewarded by quickly earning the trust of the other workers. The fact that the other men take warmly to Gabriel because of the way he behaves during the fire, and because he has family ties to the area, shows how reputations were established in a pre-industrial era. While Gabriel is quickly accepted into the Everdene farm and the surrounding community, Bathsheba faces more serious challenges. It was somewhat unconventional for a woman to own a substantial property at this time, and still more unusual for her to actively manage it herself. A farm like Bathsheba's involved a substantial and time-consuming amount of effort to be run successfully, and, as quickly becomes evident, requires courage, keen intelligence, and business savvy. Bathsheba shows the same independent spirit that distinguished her when she was helping her aunt, even though the public attention she attracts clearly makes her somewhat uncomfortable. While Bathsheba's new authority and status gives her new freedoms, it also seems to make her reckless. She doesn't have any companions or advisors, and seems to depend on a friendship with Liddy to keep her from boredom. Bathsheba's decision to send the valentine to Boldwood is related to the new autonomy and power she wields once taking on the traditionally masculine role of farmer and manager. As Karin Koehler writes, "She feels compelled to challenge Boldwood's emphatically masculine sense of self, and, prompted by Liddy's suggestion, intuits that her aim will be accomplished most effectively by a deliberate, aggressive subversion of sexual and gender norms" . The two impulsive young women egg each other on, leading to the decision to send the valentine to Boldwood. While the prank would be somewhat expected from a maidservant like Liddy, as a landowner and business person, Bathsheba should act with more discretion and foresight. Particularly as a woman, her good reputation is paramount, and she risks jeopardizing it for a childish, lighthearted prank. Although on a very different scale, Bathsheba's impulsive action is paralleled by the risky choices Fanny makes as she follows her heart. As a working-class young woman who doesn't seem to have any family members, she is in a perilous position and can easily be manipulated by an unscrupulous man. Soldiers like Troy had a reputation for womanizing, facilitated by the fact that when the troops moved on, it was easy to discard any women they had pursued affairs with. Troy's vague and ambiguous statements about plans for his marriage hint that he may not in fact be committed to legitimizing his relationship with Fanny.