which to conclude, at first; but she knew at once that it was very disagreeable.

-

His one trait which seemed intolerable, which so often struck from her brain the quick flash of inward resentment, was his mental contempt for women. It was a deep flaw in his usual good breeding, that he so often made this contempt apparent to a woman. The religion of gentle manners, which never forgets the feelings of others, would have held dumb the covert or open sneer against woman to a woman,- most of all to a woman who never named manhood save in reverence. But the man who intends to be most generous is never aware how many thoughtless words he utters, which cut into the heart of the true woman by his side because she is a woman. Man-like, Athel Dane dealt in generalities. Woman-like, Agnes Darcy applied the concrete. It was impossible for her to know in his utterances of general impatience and contempt concerning women, how soon he came to make silently an exception of herself. Nor, had she known it, would it have afforded her the slightest comfort. She held herself as in no wise above or different from her kind.

But there came a time when he grew silent on this theme, which before seemed an ever-present irritation in his mind. If he did not speak in praise of women, he was at least silent on their foibles. Agnes noticed the silence, and was grateful for it; from that time began the real companionship of this man and woman in the equal human nature which each alike received from God. Agnes never argued on so supremely foolish a theme as the equality or inequality of the sexes, which, in two halves, make human nature complete. She simply lived before him, true to the best that God had given her; and because she lived, he came at last to reverence all womanhood for her sake. Nor did he differ froin the race of men in this, that he learned to measure all women by the woman that he knew best. It was a revelation, an inspiration, new and wonderful, when for the first time in his life he formed a habit of being with a woman who, while she held in herself an undefined personal charm for him, was nearly five years his senior by time, and fifty by actual experience; and who was his equal in intellect and in culture, if not in positive learning.

She might have been all these, and yet never have been the force in his life which she became. She was this because she had that insight into his nature, and that sympathy with it, which revealed himself to himself, while at the same time it seemed to draw him to a higher good. By what fine gradations and subtle phrasing she drew forth into the light phases of his own character before undreamed of by himself! It seemed to him that he was a stranger to his own soul till he knew this woman. Yet it was not that she often defined in speech the finer possibilities of his nature. She in herself seemed to embody a quality of soul more inspiring than he ever yet had known. By her very being and atmosphere she quickened in him emotion, aspiration, and strength. The very thought of her was transmuted in him into moral insight and power. If he felt a consciousness of peace in her presence, the like of which he had never attained to in his existence before; when he neither saw her face nor heard her voice, he perceived her no less as a new and undreamed-of force in his thought and action.

Thus to move and to mould the inward nature of a man, a woman must first have lived broadly, pro

foundly, both in thought and in emotion. By the keenest discipline of life, by the utmost consecration which is its final crown, she must have come into possession and command of her whole selfhood. With a capacity to suffer and to love unknown to the untested and unpurified, she is at the mercy of no impulse in herself, or in another. It may reach her, but can never overthrow her, in the high, clear atmosphere wherein she abides. Such potency and such command cannot belong to extreme youth. Thus it so often happens that young men of the finest mould are said to love women older than themselves. Men who have attained the highest distinction as men have almost always, at some stage of their youth, entered into such an experience. It by no means follows that this experience should prove to be the passion of love, or end in marriage; no less it tinges, if it does not shape, all the future of the man. It is impossible that he should remain what he was before he touched as a quickstone this potent good, whose fine vibration will thrill through his being while he exists.

So much by the gentle attrition of long-continued intercourse Agnes became to Athel Dane. Softly as flowers blossom, her influence expanded in his heart. Silent as dew falls, it was shed upon his arid life till it bloomed all over with gentle amenities. The growth was not of a day. Slowly he came to the consciousness that she, lowly and lovable as a woman, was also infinitely more than he once believed any woman could be to him, a mental and spiritual force in his thoughts and life. He placed himself under the most rigid self-examination concerning the heavenly Mondays toward which he discovered himself turning with ever-increasing interest and desire. What did they contain, after all, that he should want it so much, and recur to it so often, with such a sense of deep satisfaction? Only a long ride over the hills and through the woods, then a child to be taught, a golden girl, a wood-nymph in pure health, full of intuitive intelligence, acute sensibility, torrents of temper, swift contritions, and a lovesomeness which triumphed over all; only a silent woman sitting apart at her sewing or sketching, a woman still young, as time is counted, but with a look in her eyes that seemed to come from far distant spheres, whose presence was more pervasive in its silence than that of other women set in the aura of smile and speech; a halfhour's conversation with her, perhaps, when the lessons were over, between Vida's questions, and with Evelyn bustling about. Yet it was the words uttered then, the turn of her head, the tones of her voice, that went back with him through the long ride, and stayed with him till he came again.

Their intercourse

He knew nothing of her past life. was not of the sort that impinged upon their own personal experiences. Concerning herself he had never asked her a question, and she had never essayed a confidence. Through the new spiritual vision by which he perceived her, he believed in her without doubt or query. "It is enough for me that she is," he said, if he ever found himself speculating on the possible past which had contributed to such a flowering of mind and spirit.

When, one late autumn Sabbath, Agnes and Vida appeared in the stone church of Dufferin, its rector's joy was full. The whole audience seemed to concentrate into one pair of eyes turned toward the preacher. As he became conscious of it he thought, "It is well that she cannot come always, or even often; what she

gave of inspiration I should give back in consciousness only to herself, and forget the others, which would be wrong." To Agnes, the organ anthems, the sweet voices bearing heavenward Te Deum laudamus, the responses of the people, the devout utterances of the preacher, moved her soul to its depths, to remember and to worship. Like human companionship, not till it came to her again, the ministry of the Lord's anointed, the service of his holy temple, did she realize how she had missed them or needed them.

By degrees the people of Dufferin became aware of a change in their rector. He was less oracular, more simply manly. He seemed to have cast off his burden of conscious superiority somewhere, and to now take the hand of a parishoner as one fallible human being may that of another. He ceased to treat the young women of the congregation as if they belonged to a proscribed caste upon whom he must turn a sort of angel Gabriel glance, and then his back. At last he treated them as fellow-mortals, if naught beside. He became a hero to every little school-child that he met by the way, whose hand he took, and whose confidence he won. He was found oftener in the houses of the poor, and by the beds of the sick. The cold fastidiousness which had been in him a prevailing and repelling trait, that had jarred sadly upon his people, gradually melted into a glow of sympathy and of unconscious kinship, as if he had come into consort at last with human need; with its weakness, folly, and pain, as well as with its high aspiration and lofty fulfilment.

The change in himself was felt not more in his actions than through all his sermons. They ceased to be fine disquisitions on a remote heaven and a still more remote God. Now it was, "God with us;" "God made manifest in the flesh;' "God is love;""God is our Father: our closest friend;" "Heaven begins here;" " Religion is not gloom, it is growth, faith, purity, joy, not only in believing, but in doing, being, living, now." At last he had food for the people. The people came and were fed, because their souls were hungry for human as well as heavenly help. The name of the young rector of Dufferin was never uttered by so many lips, in such loving accents, as now. aged, the little child, the very poor, spoke the tenderest words for him.

The

At last one day Stella Moon whispered: "The rector is goin' to marry Madame Darcy; he rides to the Pinnacle every Monday - Jim Dare told me so."

(To be continued.)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. CHAPTER XLII. JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN: "BUCK'S HEAD."

A WALL bounded the site of Casterbridge Union-house, except along a portion of the end. Here a high gable stood prominent, and it was covered like the front with a mat of ivy. In this gable was no window, chimney, ornament, or protuberance of any kind. The single feature appertaining to it, beyond the expanse of dark green leaves, was a small door.

The situation of the door was peculiar. The sill was three or four feet above the ground, and for a moment one was at a loss for an explanation of this exceptional altitude, till ruts immediately beneath suggested that the door was used solely for the passage of articles and persons to and from the level of a vehicle standing on the outside. Upon the whole, the door seemed to advertise itself as a species

of Traitors' Gate translated to another element. That entry and exit hereby was only at rare intervals became apparent on noting that tufts of grass were allowed to flourish undisturbed in the chinks of the sill.

As the clock from the tower of St. George's Church pointed at three minutes to three, a blue spring wagon, picked out with red, and containing boughs and flowers, turned from the high-road and halted on this side of the building. Whilst the chimes were yet stammering out a shattered form of "Malbrook," Joseph Poorgrass rang the bell, and received directions to back his wagon against the high door under the gable. The door then opened, and a plain elm coffin was slowly thrust forth, and laid by two men in fustian along the middle of the vehicle.

One of the two men then stepped up beside it, took from his pocket a lump of chalk, and wrote upon the cover the name and a few other words in a large scrawling hand. (We believe that they do these things more tenderly now, and provide a plate.) He covered the whole with a black cloth, threadbare, but decent, the tail-board of the wagon was returned to its place, one of the men handed a certificate of registry to Poorgrass, and both entered the door, closing it behind them. Their connection with her, short

as it had been, was over forever.

Joseph then placed the flowers as enjoined, and the evergreens around the flowers, till it was difficult to divine what the wagon contained; he smacked his whip, and the rather pleasing funeral car crept up the hill, and along the road to Weatherbury.

The afternoon drew on apace, and, looking to the left towards the sea as he walked beside the horse, Poorgrass saw strange clouds and scrolls of mist rolling over the high hills which girt the landscape in that quarter. They came in yet greater volumes, and indolently crept across the intervening valleys, and around the withered, papery flags of the sloughs and river banks. Then their dark spongy forms closed in upon the sky. It was a sudden overgrowth of atmospheric fungi which had their roots in the neighboring sea; and by the time that horse, man, and corpse entered Yalbury Great Wood, these silent workings of an invisible hand had reached them, and they were completely enveloped. It was the first arrival of the autumn fogs, and the first fog of the series.

The

The air was as an eye suddenly struck blind. wagon and its load rolled no longer on the horizontal division between clearness and opacity. They were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor thoughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely, that the crunching of the wagon-wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized.

Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like in their monochrome of gray. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny.

The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The hollow echo of its fall reminded the wagoner painfully of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual dropping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the grayness of aged men, and the rusty red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops, like diamonds on auburn hair.

Situated by the roadside in the midst of this wood was

the old inn, called "Buck's Head." It was about a mile and a half from Weatherbury, and in the meridian times of stage-coach travelling had been the place where many coaches changed and kept their relays of horses. All the old stabling was now pulled down, and little remained besides the habitable inn itself, which, standing a little way back from the road, signified its existence to people far up and down the highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough of an elm on the opposite side of the way.

Travellers for the variety tourist had hardly developed into a distinct species at this date- sometimes said in passing, when they cast their eyes up to the sign-bearing tree, that artists were fond of representing the sign-board hanging thus, but that they themselves had never before noticed so perfect an instance in actual working order. It was near this tree that the wagon was standing into which Gabriel Oak crept on his first journey to Weatherbury; but, owing to the darkness, the sign and the inn had been unobserved.

The manners of the inn were of the old-established type. Indeed, in the minds of its frequenters they existed as unalterable formulæ : e. g.

Rap with the bottom of your pint for more liquor.
For tobacco, shout.

In calling for the girl in waiting, say, "Maid!"
Ditto for the landlady, " Old Soul!" etc., etc.

It was a relief to Joseph's heart when the friendly signboard came in view, and, stopping his horse immediately beneath it, he proceeded to fulfil an intention made a long time before. His spirits were oozing out of him quite. He turned the horse's head to the green bank, and entered the hostel for a mug of ale.

Going down into the kitchen of the inn, the floor of which was a step below the passage, which in its turn was a step below the road outside, what should Joseph see to gladden his eyes but two copper-colored disks, in the form of the countenances of Mr. Jan Coggan and Mr. Mark Clark. These owners of the two most appreciative throats in the neighborhood, on this side of respectability, were now sitting face to face over a three-legged circular table, having an iron rim to keep cups and pots from being accidentally elbowed off; they might have been said to resemble the setting sun and the full moon shining vis-à-vis across the globe. Why, 'tis neighbor Poorgrass! said Mark Clark. "I'm sure your face don't praise your mistress's table, Joseph."

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"I've had a very pale companion for the last five miles," said Joseph, indulging in a shudder toned down by resignation. "And to speak the truth, 'twas beginning to tell upon me. I assure ye I han't seed the color of victuals or drink since breakfast time this morning, and that was no more than a dew-bit afield."

"Then drink, Joseph, and don't restrain yourself!" said Coggan, handing him a hooped mug three quarters full.

Joseph drank for a moderately long time, then for a longer time, saying, as he lowered the mug, "Tis pretty drinking very pretty drinking, and is more than cheerful on my melancholy errand, so to speak it."

-

"True, drink is a pleasant delight," said Jan, as one who repeated a truism so familiar to his brain that he hardly noticed its passage over his tongue; and, lifting the cup, Coggan tilted his head gradually backwards, with closed eyes, that his expectant soul might not be diverted for one instant from its bliss by irrelevant surroundings.

"Well, I must be on again," said Poorgrass. "Not but that I should like another nip with ye; but the country might lose confidence in me if I was seed here."

"Where be ye trading o't to to-day then, Joseph ?" "Back to Weatherbury. I've got poor little Fanny Robin in my wagon outside, and I must be at the churchyard gates at a quarter to five with her."

66

Aye I've heard of it. And so she's nailed up in parish boards after all, and nobody to pay the bell shilling and the grave half-crown."

"The parish pays the grave half-crown, but not the bell shilling, because the bell's a luxury but 'a can hardly do without the grave, poor body. However, I expect our mistress will pay all."

"A pretty maid as ever I see! But what's yer hurry, Joseph? The pore woman's dead, and you can't bring her to life, and you may as well sit down comfortable and finish another with us."

"I don't mind taking just the merest thimbleful of imagination more with ye, sonnies. But only a few minutes, because 'tis as 'tis."

"Of course you'll have another drop. A man's twice the man afterwards. You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking. Too much liquor is bad, and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house; but, after all, many people haven't the gift of enjoying a soak, and since we are highly favored with a power that way, we should make the most o't."

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True," said Mark Clark. ""Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs-upon my carcass, they have!"

"Well, really, I must be onward again now," said Joseph.

"Now, now, Joseph; nonsense! The poor woman is dead, isn't she, and what's your hurry?”

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Well, I hope Providence won't be in a way with me for my doings," said Joseph, again sitting down. "I've been troubled with weak moments lately, 'tis true. I've been drinky once this month already, and I did not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I don't want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered lightly." "I believe ye to be a chapel-member, Joseph. That I do."

"Oh, no, no! I don't go so far as that."

"For my part," said Coggan, "I'm stanch Church of England."

"Aye, and faith, so be I," said Mark Clark.

"I won't say much for myself: I don't wish to," Coggan continued, with that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the barley-corn. "But I've never changed a single doctrine: I've stuck like a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes, there's this to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all. But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel-members be clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the newspaper."

"They can they can," said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; "but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great person like Providence than babes unborn."

"Chapel-folk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we," said Joseph, thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Coggan. "We know very well that if anybody goes to heaven, they will. They've worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it, such as 'tis. I'm no such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not. But I hate a feller who'll change his old ancient doctrine for the sake of getting to heaven. I'd as soon turn king'sevidence for the few pounds you get. Why, neighbors, when every one of my taties were frosted, our Parson Thirdly were the man who gave me a sack for seed, though he hardly had one for his own use, and no money to buy 'em. If it hadn't been for him, I shouldn't hae had a tatie to put in my garden. D'ye think I'd turn after that? No, I'll stick to my side; and if we be in the wrong, so be it: I'll fall with the fallen!

"Well said; very well said," observed Joseph. "How

ever, folks, I must be moving now; upon my life I must. Parson Thirdly will be waiting at the church gates, and there's the woman a-biding outside in the wagon."

"Joseph Poorgrass, don't be so miserable! Parson Thirdly won't mind. He's a generous man; he's found me in tracts for years, and I've consumed a good many in the course of a long and rather shady life; but he's never been the man to complain of the expense. Sit down."

The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained, the less was his spirit troubled by the duties which devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes glided by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling points on the surface of darkness. Coggan's watch struck six from his pocket in the usual still small tones.

At that moment hasty steps were heard in the entry, and the door opened to admit the figure of Gabriel Oak, followed by the maid of the inn, bearing a candle. He stared sternly at the one lengthy and two round faces of the sitters, which confronted him with the expressions of a fiddle and a couple of warming-pans. Joseph Poorgrass blinked, and shrank several inches into the background.

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Upon my soul, I'm ashamed of you; 'tis disgraceful, Joseph, disgraceful!" said Gabriel, indignantly. "Coggan, you call yourself a man, and don't know better than this!

Coggan looked up indefinitely at Oak, one or other of his eyes occasionally opening and closing of its own accord, as if it were not a member but a dozy individual with a distinct personality.

"Don't take on so, shepherd!" said Mark Clark, looking reproachfully at the candle, which appeared to possess special features of interest for his eyes.

"Nobody can hurt a dead woman," at length said Coggan, with the precision of a machine. "All that could be done for her is done-she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself in a tearing hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see, and don't know what you do with her at all? If she'd been alive, I would have been the first to help her. If she now wanted victuals and drink, I'd pay for it, money down. But she's dead, and no speed of ours will bring her to life. The woman's past us -time spent upon her is throwed away; why should we hurry to do what's not required? Drink, shepherd, and be friends, for to-morrow we may be like her."

"We may," added Mark Clark, emphatically, at once drinking, himself, to run no further risk of losing his chance by the event alluded to, Jan meanwhile merging his additional thoughts of to-morrow in a song :—

"Do hold thy horning, Jan!" said Oak; and turning upon Poorgrass, "As for you, Joseph, who do your wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy ways, you are as drunk as you can stand."

"No, Shepherd Oak, no! Listen to reason, shepherd. All that's the matter with me is the affliction called a multiplying eye, and that's how it is I look double to you - I mean you look double to me."

"A multiplying eye is a very distressing thing," said Mark Clark.

"It always comes on when I have been in a publichouse a little time," said Joseph Poorgrass, meekly. "Yes, I see two of every sort, as if I were some holy man living in the times of King Noah and entering into the ark. Y-y-y-yes," he added, becoming much affected by the picture of himself as a person thrown away, and shedding tears, "I feel too good for England: I ought to have lived in Genesis by rights, like the other men of sacrifice, and then I shouldn't have b-b-been called a d-d-drunkard in such a way!"

"I wish you'd show yourself a man of spirit, and not sit whining there!”

"Show myself a man of spirit? . . . Ah, well! let me take the name of drunkard humbly let me be a man of contrite knees - let it be! I know that I always do say Please God' afore I do anything, from my getting up to my going down of the same, and I am willing to take as much disgrace as belongs to that holy act. Hah, yes! . . . But not a man of spirit? Have I ever allowed the toe of pride to be lifted against my person without shouting manfully that I question the right to do so? I inquire that query boldly "

"We can't say that you have, Joseph Poorgrass," said Jan, emphatically.

"Never have I allowed such treatment to pass unquestioned! Yet the shepherd says in the face of that rich testimony that I am not a man of spirit! Well, let it pass by, and death is a kind friend."

Gabriel, seeing that neither of the three was in a fit state to take charge of the wagon for the remainder of the journey, made no reply, but closing the door again upon them, went across to where the vehicle stood, now getting indistinct in the fog and gloom of this mildewy time. He pulled the horse's head from the large patch of turf it had eaten bare, readjusted the boughs over the coffin, and drove along through the unwholesome night.

It had gradually become rumored in the village that the body to be brought and buried that day was all that was left of the unfortunate Fanny Robin, who had followed the Eleventh from Casterbridge to Melchester. But, thanks to Boldwood's reticence and Oak's generosity, the lover she had followed had never been individualized as Troy. Gabriel hoped that the whole truth of the matter might not be published till at any rate the girl had been in her grave a few days, when the interposing barriers of earth and time and a sense that the events had been somewhat shut into oblivion, would deaden the sting that revelation and invidious remark would have for Bathsheba just now.

By the time that Gabriel reached the old manor-house, her residence, which lay in his way to the church, it was quite dark. A man came from the gate and said through the fog, which hung between them like blown flour, "Is that Poorgrass with the corpse?"

Gabriel recognized the voice as that of the parson. "The corpse is here, sir," said Gabriel.

"I have just been to inquire of Mrs. Troy if she could tell me the reason of the delay. I am afraid it is too late now for the funeral to be performed with proper decency. Have you the registrar's certificate?"

"No," said Gabriel. "I expect Poorgrass has that; and he's at the 'Buck's Head." I forgot to ask him for it."

"Then that settles the matter. We'll put off the funeral till to-morrow morning. The body may be brought on to the church, or it may be left here at the farm and fetched by the bearers in the morning. They waited more than an hour, and have now gone home."

Gabriel had his reasons for thinking the latter a most objectionable plan, notwithstanding that Fanny had been an inmate of the farm-house for several years in the lifetime of Bathsheba's uncle. Visions of several unhappy contingencies which might arise from this delay flitted before him. But his will was not law, and he went indoors to inquire of his mistress what were her wishes on the subject. He found her in an unusual mood: her eyes as she looked up to him were suspicious and perplexed as with some antecedent thought. Troy had not yet returned. At first Bathsheba assented with a mien of indifference to his proposition that they should go on to the church at once with their burden; but immediately afterwards, following Gabriel to the gate, she swerved to the extreme of solicitousness on Fanny's account, and desired that the girl might be brought into the house. Oak argued upon the convenience of leaving her in the wagon, just as she lay now, with her flowers and green leaves about her, merely wheeling the vehicle into the coach-house till the morning, but to no purpose. "It is unkind and unch ristian," she said, " to leave the poor thing in a coach-ho se all night."

"Very well, then," said the parson. "And I will arrange that the funeral shall take place early to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Troy is right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead fellow-creature too thoughtfully. We must remember that though she may have erred grievously in leaving her home, she is still our sister; and it is to be believed that God's uncovenanted mercies are extended towards her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ." The parson's words spread into the heavy air with a sad yet unperturbed cadence, and Gabriel shed an honest tear. Bathsheba seemed unmoved. Mr. Thirdly then left them, and Gabriel lighted a lantern. Fetching three other men to assist him, they bore the unconscious truant indoors, placing the coffin on two benches in the middle of a little sitting-room next the hall, as Bathsheba directed.

He

Every one except Gabriel Oak then left the room. still indecisively lingered beside the body. He was deeply troubled at the wretchedly ironical aspect that circumstances were putting on with regard to Troy's wife, and at his own powerlessness to counteract them. In spite of his careful manoeuvring all this day, the very worst event that could in any way have happened in connection with the burial had happened now. Oak imagined a terrible discovery resulting from this afternoon's work that might cast over Bathsheba's life a shade which the interposition of many lapsing years might but indifferently lighten, and which nothing at all might altogether remove.

Suddenly, as in a last attempt to save Bathsheba from, at any rate, immediate anguish, he looked again, as he had looked before, at the chalk writing upon the coffin-lid. The scrawl was this simple one, "Fanny Robin and child." Gabriel took his handkerchief and carefully rubbed out the two latter words. He then left the room, and went out quietly by the front door.

"Why don't you sit up-stairs, ma'am?” "Why don't I?" said Bathsheba, desultorily. "It isn't worth while there's a fire here. Liddy," she suddenly exclaimed in an impulsive and excited whisper, "have you heard anything strange said of Fanny?" The words had no sooner escaped her than an expression of unutterable regret crossed her face, and she burst into tears.

She came to

"No-not a word!" said Liddy, looking at the weeping woman with astonishment. What is it makes you cry so, ma'am; has anything hurt you?" Bathsheba's side with a face full of sympathy. "No, Liddy- I don't want you any more. I can hardly say why I have taken so to crying lately: I never used to cry. Good night."

Liddy then left the parlor and closed the door. Bathsheba was lonely and miserable now; not lonelier actually than she had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting thoughts about her husband's past. Her wayward sentiment that evening concerning Fanny's temporary resting-place had been the result of a strange complication of impulses in Bathsheba's bosom. Perhaps it would be more accurately

described as a determined rebellion against her prejudices, a revulsion from a lower instinct of uncharitableness, which would have withheld all sympathy from the dead woman, because in life she had preceded Bathsheba in the attentions of a man whom Bathsheba had by no means ceased from loving, though her love was sick to death just now with the gravity of a further misgiving.

In five or ten minutes there was another tap at the door. Liddy reappeared, and coming in a little way stood hesitat ing, until at length she said, "Maryann has just heard something very strange, but I know it isn't true. And we shall be sure to know the rights of it in a day or two." "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing connected with you or us, ma'am! It is about Fanny. That same thing you have heard." "I have heard nothing."

"I mean that a wicked story is got to Weatherbury within this last hour-that"-Liddy came close to her mistress and whispered the remainder of the sentence slowly into her ear, inclining her head as she spoke in the direction of the room where Fanny lay.

Bathsheba trembled from head to foot. "I don't believe it!" she said, excitedly. not written on the coffin-cover."

"And it is

"Nor I, ma'am. And a good many others don't; for we should surely have been told more about it if it had been true don't you think so, ma'am?"

"We might, or we might not."

Bathsheba turned and looked into the fire, that Liddy might not see her face. Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed.

Bathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who loved her least. The sadness of Fanny Robin's fate did not make Bathsheba's glorious, although she was the Esther to this poor Vashti, and their fates might be supposed to stand in some respects as contrasts to each other. When Liddy came into the room a second time, the beautiful eyes which met hers had worn a listless, weary look. When she went out after telling the story, they had expressed wretchedness in full activity. This also sank to apathy after a time. But her thoughts, sluggish and confused at first, acquired more life as the minutes passed, and the dull misgiving in her brow and eyes suddenly gave way to the stillness of concentration.

Bathsheba had grounds for conjecturing a connection between her own history and the dimly suspected tragedy of Fanny's end, which Oak and Boldwood never for a moment credited her with possessing. The meeting with the lonely woman on the previous Saturday night had been unwitnessed and unspoken of. Oak may have had the best of intentions in withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had happened; but had he known that Bathsheba's perceptions had already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected after all.

She suddenly felt a longing desire to speak to some one stronger than herself, and so get strength to sustain her surmised position with dignity and her carking doubts with stoicism. Where could she find such a friend? Nowhere in the house. She was by far the coolest of the women under her roof. Patience and suspension of judgment for a few hours were what she wanted to learn, and there was nobody to teach her. Might she but go to Gabriel Oak! but that could not be. What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own stand-point in the

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