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boy leaned his head upon his mother, and she drew closer to her side, as she sat gazing through the aded vistas of foliage out into the sunshine overwing the blue atmosphere and the green earth. Her es seemed to rest upon the river, to follow the white ls idly drifting seaward; yet it was not them that e saw, or any outward objects.

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She saw the face of Circe Sutherland, and she was iding her heart for halting a single moment between e fear of that face and her duty to her child. Yet w much she feared that face, perhaps she did not now till this moment. "To leave him here without a feguard, without his wife, without his children, with at face meeting him at every turn-can I?" she ked. Why did she not go as she promised? Why Des she stay to thrill him with that voice, to haunt m as I know she does? to torture me? It is too uch to bear. The world is full of prey that she ight lawfully make hers; why does she pursue the ne idol that is mine? I cannot, I cannot bear it." This last question had become the one absorbing dea of her mind, the central question of her being. Through it she agonized with destiny. Before it she hrank terrified and baffled at the shut door of the Future.

She left the garden early, before a mist of miasma Could rise from the marshes below the river, to penetrate the bland brightness of the air. She was thankful for the moment that even in solicitude for her child she could forget herself. Vida brought back a basketfal of violets as her trophies. Little Cyril had seen a squirrel and two rabbits, which were sources of deep joy; but when the delight of telling about them and their houses was over, he sank again into the feverish restlessness and fitful slumbers of an ailing child. Vida, with shouts of glee, and a knot of violets in her nightgown, went off to bed with her Aunt Linda, while Agnes sat down by the couch of her boy, his little hot hand in hers, waiting his father's return, to consult with him on little Cyril's proposition of " going home."

When Circe Sutherland promised Agnes King to go away from the capital she intended to keep her word. But even in the good impulse warmed into life by Agnes' pain and sorrow, she made a proviso for the reluctance to go, which even then she was sure that she would feel after: "Not to-day or to-morrow, but soon, I will go," she had said. It was March then. It was only May now. She was going to-morrow. "Surely that is soon," she said to herself, as she sat with an open novel of Balzac's in her hand, while her maid, kneeling before piles of costumes, of boxes, baskets, dressing-cases, jewel-caskets, toys, and trinkets innumerable, was solving the often-recurring problem of how they were all to be dovetailed into the back-breaking trunks yawning to receive them.

"Do be careful, Cecile; that was only given me yesterday," Circe exclaimed as the maid rather impatiently dropped a delicately-carved alabaster jewel-box into the satin-lined case that was to protect it; both the gift of Cyril King.

"Yes, I know it's new that's what worries me," Baid Cecile. "No matter how much room there is in the trunks when we come, there is never enough in them when we go away to hold all the new things. I can't make room for 'em all, without packin' so close they'll break," she said, with a tone and look of despair, as she glanced from the mountains before her to the

trunks.

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Very well; then go and get another,- or half a dozen others, if necessary," said Circe, as she took up her book with perfect unconcern.

At that moment Cyril King was walking along the avenue toward Willard's. He had left the House ǝ' least an hour before its adjournment, something that did very often now, - how often, he himself did not know. In truth, at the present time, of no subject whatever was he so ignorant as of the real state, mentally, morally, and emotionally, of Cyril King. A man no more than a bird can analyze the spell which enthralls him, when all his faculties are held in suspension by some overpowering exterior charm. A man superlatively strong in moral force can shake off the charm, make himself free, define and condemn it; but never while under its immediate influence.

But Cyril King was not morally strong. The only torpid force within him was his conscience. Had it been keen and quick like his imagination, he would not have been the Cyril King whom we know. As a man thinketh, so is he. Social freedom was the favorite theme of the Affinity Club. theme of the Affinity Club. Social liberty in its bearing upon the liberty of the individual was the only social problem which had interested Cyril in the slightest, the only one which had entered into his thoughts, which had received the verdict of his approbation, and which already was beginning to bear fruit in his conduct. The fatal fallacy in all self-assumed "reforms" is that they strike at the roots of social order and personal peace, in the name of the greater good. The man rushing on to consummate his own selfishness, the woman drifting out, with no anchor to hold by, into the sea of limitless desire, if given to a false philosophy, declare themselves to be "right" as well as "free."

Cyril King had come to the conclusion that Agnes was at once unreasonable and unsatisfying. She was his wife, the mother of his children, two facts he had decided never to forget, but to pay such dole on them as he saw fit. Outside of his relation to her, he assumed that it was not only his privilege but his right to take what he wanted and what he could get, "provided," quiescent conscience added, " you give all to Agnes that you would if you had naught else." "How can I give her what she does not call out, which, therefore, by no spiritual law can belong to her, but which does belong to another, because she spontaneously inspires it?" he would say, if inert conscience ever roused itself to ask a troublesome question. Imagination, electric and luminous; desire, deep and strong, together stifled this feeble conscience so that it but seldom made a sign.

Cyril said truly to Agnes, years before, at Tarnstone, that it was the fruits forbidden that he wanted. For him possession left too little space for imagination, desire, hope, to hold revel together in his strong but ungoverned nature. Thus, however coveted before, the thing possessed lost all exciting charm to him, because it was his. It was the thing that was not his, and that he could only obtain by difficulty, or not at all, that he wanted. It would have been Tophet enough for either to have been shut up for a life-time with the other, but as there was not in their minds the slightest probability of this, there was nothing at present which Cyril King and Circe Sutherland so much longed for as each other's society.

Willard's was the daily evening meeting-ground of politicians and statesmen. Party caucuses were not unknown to its parlors. The lobby congregated in its of

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To Agnes' "Shall you be gone long, dear?" nothing could be readier or easier than the answer, "Well, No yes, I I'm going to Willard's to meet a man. may, telling when I shall find him, or how long he will keep me when I do. Don't sit up for me."

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He not only "met a man," but many men, in that crowded caravansary; but considering the tenacious habits of politicians, it was surprising how soon he shook them off, and rid himself of them, and found his way into the private suite of parlors leading from the public ones, in which, with her Aunt Jessie, Circe Sutherland held her evening court. It was more than the Affinity society came to these Club that met here. All " popular and resplendent parlors. Why should they not? The dazzling woman, the polished and versatile conversation, the alluring music, the enchanting voice, would have filled these parlors with the most attractive of men and women in any capital on earth. Through all the gray Lenten season there had been no centre of light to compare with these informal "evenings" of Mrs. Sutherland. What wonder that she had not kept her promise to Agnes, and gone sooner. Was it Agnes' husband only who felt the force of this magnet? Was not all the gay world at her feet? Cyril King, dropping in quietly and as a matter of course from the outer saloons, met her as hundreds met her, and shared her society on common ground with the rest of the world.

How was it, then, that when the business of the House would allow it, he now slipped out before adjournment, and that the hour before dinner was so often spent in that inner parlor with only one, and that one Circe Sutherland? He himself did not know how it had come to pass. He had not even paused to think

that that hour had come to be to him the hour for which all other hours were made. He did not realize how the desire within him had been buoyed up and borne on by a desire more potent beyond himself.

"Never a moment for our old talks," said Circe Sutherland. "Crowds, crowds forever in Washington. It's Emerson, isn't it, who says, 'Two only can conThat's the verse; a third person is an impertinence'? idea. I never quote verbatim. Does that tedious House never adjourn before five o'clock? If it does, do drop in some day. From four to five is my hour, I will have it for these Lenten days, my very own. my books, my music, my pet friends. I've asked nobody yet but you."

"I feel your kindness," said Cyril, with more than a flush of pleasure.

Do come.

"It's no kindness. I want you to come. I'll play for you your music." With what delicious thrill the honeyed poison of these words ran through his veins, from heart to brain, from brain to heart. Did she measure the fatal influence of the flattery that she distilled? Surely not. Her only thought was that it must influence to bring

him nearer to herself.

Once out of Agnes' presence, beyond the gaze of those appealing eyes, beyond the moving tones of that pleading voice, Circe was herself again, applying with relentless logic the conclusions of her own chosen philosophy:

"Her husband!' I want nobody's husband. I

- but I'll

want no husband, no judge, no master; not I! I
want the man: his thought, his admiration, his homage.
Could I have these and be his wife? Not long. She
has lost them if she ever had them, because she is his
wife. She killed them with her truth-telling. No
glamour, no poetry, no passion, could live a minute in
such an atmosphere. I would not rob her. I want
what she cannot have, and I will have it,
keep beyond the sound of that voice and the look in
those eyes; they move me against myself. Why did I
allow Aunt Jessie to over-persuade me to call on her?
Before I saw her, I took pleasure in the thought of him
alone. Now, the expression of her eyes, and the tones
of her voice, and the words she said, mix with memo-
ries of him. A drawback-yes, in spite of myself, s
drawback; for though I know that she is over-exacting
and mistaken, I'm sorry for her. That is no reason
what she could
why I should not take my own-
But there is a
not have if I were not in the world.
force in her of some sort, else she could never have
made me promise to go. What made me promise? I'm
I did but because I did I must keep my word."
He filled all the
She was thinking of him now.
undercurrents of her thought, even while her
lessly ran over the pages of Balzac. "Who, in looking
back over the happiest portion of his life, can single from
Surely
it all one perfectly happy day?" she read.
not I," she mused. Something I've missed, or itsel
missed me! Of all that I call mine, what makes me
so happy as the glance of his eyes, the thrilling tone
in his voice, the touch of his hand? And I am going
I need not have
to-morrow, just to keep my word.
gone. I will come back; or he shall come to me. Ah
I shall know by his look, when I tell him that I am
going, how much he loves me."

sorry

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eyes

list

A servant brought in a card, and with the book stil in her hand, and tears in her eyes, Circe went into the adjoining parlor to meet her expected visitor.

"Tears!" exclaimed Cyril, as advancing to take he hand he saw two gleaming drops quivering on the long dark eyelashes. "Tears! What dares to make you shed one tear?" and he led her to a sofa.

"A trifle, something that makes many people glad I shall leave Washington in the morning." "Leave Washington! No. You must not." The deep pallor that overspread his face betrayed mor than his words.

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fuencing you, in taking you, she called it, away from her. You know that I do not believe that one can be

taken from another; that what we lose, we lose through some lack in ourselves, or through some excrescence of our natures which repels and drives from us that which we would bind forever to us. But I cannot, however unwittingly, be the cause of pain to any one," -in the gentlest voice. "So I promised Mrs. King I would go away soon. I intended that it should have been sooner, but found myself so involved in preëngagements I could not go. I thought I would not mar for myself the few pleasant hours left, by telling you. Are you sorry a little that I am going?"

Cyril was silent. This sudden blow had struck far below the sources of his surface fluency. Circe Sutherland was not disappointed. Her words, the knowledge of her departure, affected him as deeply as she desired, more deeply than she had dared to dream that they would.

Chagrin mingled with his regret and pain. She was going, not only, but going because Agnes wished it and asked it. Even now he did not forget all that was due to her as his wife; he would not speak to her disparagement, neither would he attempt to hide the pain he felt at the sudden going of the absorbing creature by

his side.

He turned to speak some word of regret; it was arrested midway between mind and heart, unuttered. Surely the grief expressed in the bowed head, the half-veiled eyes, the quivering tears, the trembling mouth, so tender and infantile, was not feigned. For him! all for him! this wondrous loveliness of sorrow. He had turned to give but the faintest utterance to his own, forgetting himself in the thought of losing her, not in one pulsation asking that she should sigh for the coming loss of his presence, and her look, her whole attitude, made his heart stand still with a sudden joy. She, the world's queen in his eyes, was filled with grief at the thought of going from him!

The impulse rushed through him to snatch her to his heart, to tell her that the world and its kingdoms of riches and glory were nothing, nothing to their love. For she loved him. He knew it, he felt it now. It was the knowledge of it that seemed to take his breath away. Triumph? Life had never given him a triumph till this moment. It was stamped on the face of this

woman in the love it bore for him.

Did he forget? No, not even then. Memory laid an icy hand upon the rein of passion. Could he have forgotten, as many a man has forgotten, in one overmastering moment, all, all but what the moment held of love for him before his eyes-could he have forgotten, with what ecstasy of confession would each have

crowned the other.

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"I cannot; I promisecked, and waited wit At this moment Aunt

to the room

from her afternoon drive, and side.ne of those swift transitions of which mortals are capable, Circe and Cyril fell at once into commonplaces on the weather and current events, as if they had not for an instant pursued anything else. Cyril refused an invitation to dine, and accepted another to "drop in again during the evening." "Come rather late," said Aunt Jessie, "then perhaps you can afford to take an hour after callers have gone, for a game of whist."

Another moment and Cyril stood in the public office, discussing the merits of a financial "bill" pending before the House, with an earnestness that might indicate that he had thought of nothing else for the past twenty-four hours. Under all this matter-of-course surface ran unceasingly the undercurrent of one thought and emotion.

He was on the street presently, wending his way toward his lodging-house- and reality. He came in sight of it. He saw, mentally, Linda and Agnes and his children. He saw the boarding-house table, the uncoalescing assembly round it; smelled its conglomerate smells, so offensive to his fastidious sense, set all against what he had left: and with one of those sudden revulsions of feeling and act characteristic of him, he turned about when within a rod of the door, and walked away far faster than he had approached the house.

He took a solitary meal at Goutier's, spent an hour talking politics with the crowd at the National, a little after nine sauntered along the avenue toward Willard's, and at last with bated breath entered its inner parlors. They were still thronged with guests, and Circe was playing playing ostensibly for the company, yet playing his favorite music. He felt she meant that he should feel, that with the parlor full of brilliant and attractive guests, her music, her thoughts, her heart, were all with him. It was the utmost measure of flattery and of temptation-brimmed, overflowing. Public success he had believed to be in store for him; social recognition also, in a general way. But amid the family cares, and settled, married, finished feeling of his later years, it had never crossed even his imagination that there waited for him still the idolatry of another woman, and of such a woman! Who else was so favored among men? And now with the first taste of the too potent sweetness of this cup, just as he had come to know all that it was to him in this unguarded present,to drink it, to cling to it in defiance of fate and of the future, - it was to be taken from him. She was going. All this and how much more! rushed through the brain of Cyril King, standing there in utter placidity, apparently, near the piano, turning from the player occasionally to exchange a look or word of approbation with Aunt Jessie.

No one else was asked to remain for the game of whist. It was Aunt Jessie's game, and she delighted to have it chiefly her own way by playing into the hands of "dummie." Cyril cared nothing for the play, but everything for having Circe for his partner. Both played indifferently; Aunt Jessie indefatigably and triumphantly. She had scarcely thought of a final rubber, when Cyril, looking at his watch, claimed, "One o'clock! and you to go in the morning! Forgive my thoughtlessness in staying."

ex

"But

"It is mine if anybody's," said Aunt Jessie. really, it's no matter. Circe will have as much sleep

as if you li has either of

journey's short, and what p at its end?"

Was he to have ng all his own? No. Aunt Jessie attended to that. She felt not the slightest compunction at keeping him from his family till past one of the morning, but she had no idea of defying "the proprieties" by leaving her niece to say good-by to the gentleman alone, at that unusual hour. One long glance of the burdened eyes, one faint pressure of the delicate hand, one word of murmured farewellhis, his only, these and Cyril King was again on the street under the morning stars.

He

“Home!” “Home is where the heart is;" and surely his, that moment, was not in the lodging-house. would not go near it; he could not, not in his present state of feeling. Putting his hand on his pocket he felt for the key of his committee-room. He found it.. He would go to it, and there on the sofa spend the few hours left before daybreak.

Slowly how slowly!- the night dragged on, while Agnes slept not. Cyril's absence from dinner was not remarkable. Another "member" at the table saw him before he left the Hall of Representatives. "He went "He went away before adjournment," the gentleman said. "The House was in committee of the whole.' He could leave as well as not, so he told me that he would go and attend to some important business of his own. Still he said nothing of not being back to dinner."

Agnes held the hand of her boy, and every time the door of the lower hall opened, her pulse quickened and her heart beat fast with hope. The sunset reds touched with rosy glow the walls of her room, and slowly faded out into the cold gray of dusk at last. A servant came and lit the lamps.

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"It is evening already; he must come in a moment," she said. The hall bell gave a sudden, peremptory ring. How well she knew it, it was like no other,the evening ring of the carrier of the congressional mail. A servant brought into the room Cyril's portion, a huge packet of newspapers, and of yellow-enveloped letters from his faithful constituents, tied with red tape. His evening mail - he was always in to look over that. He must come in a moment, now. Never before did the bell ring and the front hall door open and shut so often, it seemed to her. How many times she started with hope, belief, almost, to sink back in disappointment. She heard a step on the stairs, a clear, quick step. It was Cyril's, she was sure. It came near, nearer. It was at the door. "Cyril!" she cried. It passed on; it was gone, ending at a distant door. She pressed her face against the window-pane. The flickering street lamp, with its plank of light wavering out to the corner, revealed no familiar form drawing near to the house. Once, for an instant, she caught a glimpse of the figure of a man. It must be he! No, it was only a watchman strolling leisurely along his nightly "beat." She had not dared to look at the time before. She was so afraid the hour was later even than it seemed. She looked now. It was one o'clock. "Cyril, where are you?" she moaned aloud. "I cannot feel that harm has befallen you. Something seems to say to me that you are safe-somewhere, but where? Not with her. No, that is impossible now. But where? What keeps you? Has ill come to you? my husband, my husband!"

She took a book and sat down beside the shaded lamp. It contained the story of Orestes, which she began the day before. She tried to read; tried to trace

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"But be the issue as it may,

Eternal fate will hold its way:

Nor lips that pray, nor eyes that weep,
Nor cups that rich libations steep,

Soothe those dark Powers' relentless ire,
Whose altars never flame with hallowed fire."

Her boy moaned in his sleep. She went to him, threw herself on the couch beside him, took him into her arms, and thus, overcome with exhaustion, at the early morning, sank into a troubled sleep. It was full day, and she had not wakened. The unshaded morning light from below the lifted curtain fell full on her face, as Cyril King stood and gazed upon her.

She was his wife. Not the lustrous beauty by whose side he sat last night; but this wan and weary woman on whom the revealing sunlight now shone in so cruelly, bringing out in keen distinctness every line which pain and grief, working outward, had left in heavy trace upon her face. Before the sensuous, pleasure-loving man, the faded woman is ever at painful disadvantage. Cyril King! Who could have made him believe, once, in the days when he wooed the innocent girl beneath the maples of Ulm, that some time, further on, he could stand and gaze upon her face as he was gazing now? With indifference? With more than indifference; with a keen, cruel criticism; seeing with artistic vision every defect, seeing with eyes unsoftened by one lingering thrill of tenderness. He was tired of her, thoroughly tired of her! But half conscious of it, he had never owned this to himself before. The conviction transfixed him now, without apology and without reservation. Was it not enough that she could not fill his life, without her presuming to send from his sight one who was the delight of his eyes? This was her offense, this was it which had suddenly in him turned indifference into hardness of heart. His thought and his feeling full of another, what could this poor wife do or say now, which haply might touch some chord in his nature, reaching back to that supreme moment of youth when he wooed her, loved her, and made her his own! If that word or that deed existed, she knew it not. With the most sensitive sense of fitness in all her dealings with others, she had no power of finesse with him. She awoke. The long night of loving vigils, the sear ing tears, the true, deserted heart, all spoke together. Cyril! You have come. Where were you?" "Busy. When I got through, it was so late I stayed in my committee-room."

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"I wanted you so. I wanted you to look at little Cyr. He seemed so feverish. Look at him. Does he seem very sick to you?"

"No. Why are you forever in a fidget about that child? He would be well enough if you would let him alone. He has taken cold. Children are always taking cold, and getting over it if they are not dosed."

"I expected you last night. I was sure you must come. Why didn't you come?" with a troubled air. "I told you I was busy; beside, Linda said that you was going to the lecture."

"Linda! lecture!" and her voice quivered with resentment now. "Linda seldom tells the truth of me. And you know that I would go to no lecture without you."

"More's the pity." He looked amused. He was thinking that he had never seen Agnes look so ugly as she did this moment, sitting upon the couch with the gray light pouring upon her face. This consciousness filled him, as he gazed upon her coolly and deliberately, still holding his morning cigar smouldering between his teeth.

She read his thoughts. They stung her.

"How coldly, how critically you look upon me!" she exclaimed. "How tenderly I have thought of you!" and she burst into tears. "Scene!" he sneered. 66 away."

66

Well, I am used to it; cry

Why do I live!" she moaned. "You spent your evening with her. I am sure of it. It was all the same to you that your child was sick, that your wife watched alone the whole night through, you was with her! Oh, why do I live!" "I am sure I don't know- to torment me, I suppose." Not a pulse in his heart moved toward her. She did not look pretty. There were purple rings around her eyes. Her nose was red. She troubled him; she was in his way.

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(To be continued.)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

CHAPTER XXXIV. HOME AGAIN A JUGGLER.

THAT same evening at dusk Gabriel was leaning over Coggan's garden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest.

A vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of the lane. From it spread the tones of two women talking. The tones were natural and not at all suppressed. Oak instantly knew the voices to be those of Bathsheba and Liddy.

The carriage came opposite and passed by. It was Miss Everdene's gig, and Liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat. Liddy was asking questions about the city of Bath, and her companion was answering them listlessly and unconcernedly. Both Bathsheba and the horse seemed weary.

The exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and sound, overpowered all reflection, and Oak could only luxuriate in the sense of it. All grave reports were forgotten.

He lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the eastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to limp courageously round the dim hillocks. Gabriel might have been there an additional halfhour when a dark form walked slowly by. "Good night, Gabriel," the passer said.

It was Boldwood.

"Good night, sir,” said Gabriel.

Boldwood likewise vanished up the road, and Oak shortly afterwards turned indoors to bed.

Farmer Boldwood went on towards Miss Everdene's house. He reached the front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlor. The blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was Bathsheba, looking over some papers or letters. Her back was towards Boldwood.

He went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an aching brow.

Boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with Bathsheba in the road to Yalbury. Silent and alone, he had remained in moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever closely beheld. By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night. He had come to apologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with something like a sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she had returned — only from a visit to Liddy as he supposed, the Bath escapade being quite unknown to him.

He inquired for Miss Everdene. Liddy's ́manner was odd, but he did not notice it. She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her absence the blind of the room containing Bathsheba was pulled down. Boldwood augured ill from that sign. Liddy came out.

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He was un

My mistress cannot see you, sir," she said. The farmer instantly went out by the gate. forgiven that was the issue of it all. He had seen her who was to him simultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little earlier in the summer, and

she had denied him an entrance there now.

Boldwood did not hurry homeward. It was ten o'clock at least, when, walking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury, he heard the carrier's spring-van entering the village. The van ran to and from a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by a Weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up. The lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded form, who was the first to alight.

Ah!" said Boldwood to himself, "come to see her again."

Troy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his lodging on his last visit to his native place. Boldwood was moved by a sudden determination. He hastened home. In ten minutes he was back again, and made as if he were going to call upon Troy at the carrier's. But as he approached, some one opened the door and came out. He heard this person say "Good night" to the inmates, and the voice was Troy's. This was strange, coming so immediately after his arrival. Boldwood, however, hastened up to him. Troy had what appeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand- the same that he had brought with him. It seemed as if he were going to leave again this very night.

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Troy turned up the hill and quickened his pace. Boldwood stepped forward.

"Sergeant Troy?"

"Yes- I'm Sergeant Troy."

"Just arrived from Melchester, I think?"

66 Just arrived from Bath."

"I am William Boldwood." "Indeed."

The tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted to bring Boldwood to the point. I wish to speak a word with you," he said. "What about?" "About her who lives just ahead there and about a woman you have wronged."

on.

"I wonder at your impertinence," said Troy, moving

"Now look here," said Boldwood, standing in front of him, "wonder or not, you are going to hold a conversation with me."

Troy heard the dull determination in Boldwood's voice, looked at his stalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand. He remembered it was past ten o'clock. It seemed worth while to be civil to Boldwood. Very well, I'll listen with pleasure," said Troy, placing his bag on the ground, "only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in the farm-house there."

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"Well then-I know a good deal concerning your

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