CHAPTER X.--SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER

Five-years later.--I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has

interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time

when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now. I am impelled to

add one sentence to round off its record of the past. About a year ago

my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and

heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who

assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully-

ordained curate of the next parish. His penitence for the part he played

ended in love. We have all now made atonement for our sins against her:

may she be deceived no more.

1887.

THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST

I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the

neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight

highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail

to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem

superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history,

the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.

It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas-

time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael

Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton--a large parish situate

about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a

railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their

annual harmonies under the windows of the local population. The band of

instrumentalists and singers was one of the largest in the county; and,

unlike the smaller and finer Mellstock string-band, which eschewed all

but the catgut, it included brass and reed performers at full Sunday

services, and reached all across the west gallery.

On this night there were two or three violins, two 'cellos, a tenor viol,

double bass, hautboy, clarionets, serpent, and seven singers. It was,

however, not the choir's labours, but what its members chanced to

witness, that particularly marked the occasion.

They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any

incident of an unusual kind, but to-night, according to the assertions of

several, there prevailed, to begin with, an exceptionally solemn and

thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band, as if they

were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who

had been of their number in earlier years, and now were mute in the

churchyard under flattening mounds--friends who had shown greater zest

for melody in their time than was shown in this; or that some past voice

of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its

acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting, instead of a familiar living

neighbour. Whether this were fact or fancy, the younger members of the

choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy.

When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of

the village, near the White Horse Inn, which they made their starting

point, some one observed that they were full early, that it was not yet

twelve o'clock. The local waits of those days mostly refrained from

sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived, and

not caring to return to their beer, they decided to begin with some

outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane, where the people had no clocks, and

would not know whether it were night or morning. In that direction they

accordingly went; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention

was attracted by a light beyond the houses, quite at the top of the lane.

The road from Chalk-Newton to Broad Sidlinch is about two miles long and

in the middle of its course, where it passes over the ridge dividing the

two villages, it crosses at right angles, as has been stated, the lonely

monotonous old highway known as Long Ash Lane, which runs, straight as a

surveyor's line, many miles north and south of this spot, on the

foundation of a Roman road, and has often been mentioned in these

narratives. Though now quite deserted and grass-grown, at the beginning

of the century it was well kept and frequented by traffic. The

glimmering light appeared to come from the precise point where the roads

intersected.

'I think I know what that mid mean!' one of the group remarked.

They stood a few moments, discussing the probability of the light having

origin in an event of which rumours had reached them, and resolved to go

up the hill.

Approaching the high land their conjectures were strengthened. Long Ash

Lane cut athwart them, right and left; and they saw that at the junction

of the four ways, under the hand-post, a grave was dug, into which, as

the choir drew nigh, a corpse had just been thrown by the four Sidlinch

men employed for the purpose. The cart and horse which had brought the

body thither stood silently by.

The singers and musicians from Chalk-Newton halted, and looked on while

the gravediggers shovelled in and trod down the earth, till, the hole

being filled, the latter threw their spades into the cart, and prepared

to depart.

'Who mid ye be a-burying there?' asked Lot Swanhills in a raised voice.

'Not the sergeant?'

The Sidlinch men had been so deeply engrossed in their task that they had

not noticed the lanterns of the Chalk-Newton choir till now.

'What--be you the Newton carol-singers?' returned the representatives of

Sidlinch.

'Ay, sure. Can it be that it is old Sergeant Holway you've a-buried

there?'

''Tis so. You've heard about it, then?'

The choir knew no particulars--only that he had shot himself in his apple-

closet on the previous Sunday. 'Nobody seem'th to know what 'a did it

for, 'a b'lieve? Leastwise, we don't know at Chalk-Newton,' continued

Lot.

'O yes. It all came out at the inquest.'

The singers drew close, and the Sidlinch men, pausing to rest after their

labours, told the story. 'It was all owing to that son of his, poor old

man. It broke his heart.'

'But the son is a soldier, surely; now with his regiment in the East

Indies?'

'Ay. And it have been rough with the army over there lately. 'Twas a

pity his father persuaded him to go. But Luke shouldn't have twyted the

sergeant o't, since 'a did it for the best.'

The circumstances, in brief, were these: The sergeant who had come to

this lamentable end, father of the young soldier who had gone with his

regiment to the East, had been singularly comfortable in his military

experiences, these having ended long before the outbreak of the great war

with France. On his discharge, after duly serving his time, he had

returned to his native village, and married, and taken kindly to domestic

life. But the war in which England next involved herself had cost him

many frettings that age and infirmity prevented him from being ever again

an active unit of the army. When his only son grew to young manhood, and

the question arose of his going out in life, the lad expressed his wish

to be a mechanic. But his father advised enthusiastically for the army.

'Trade is coming to nothing in these days,' he said. 'And if the war

with the French lasts, as it will, trade will be still worse. The army,

Luke--that's the thing for 'ee. 'Twas the making of me, and 'twill be

the making of you. I hadn't half such a chance as you'll have in these

splendid hotter times.'

Luke demurred, for he was a home-keeping, peace-loving youth. But,

putting respectful trust in his father's judgment, he at length gave way,

and enlisted in the ---d Foot. In the course of a few weeks he was sent

out to India to his regiment, which had distinguished itself in the East

under General Wellesley.

But Luke was unlucky. News came home indirectly that he lay sick out

there; and then on one recent day when his father was out walking, the

old man had received tidings that a letter awaited him at Casterbridge.

The sergeant sent a special messenger the whole nine miles, and the

letter was paid for and brought home; but though, as he had guessed, it

came from Luke, its contents were of an unexpected tenor.

The letter had been written during a time of deep depression. Luke said

that his life was a burden and a slavery, and bitterly reproached his

father for advising him to embark on a career for which he felt unsuited.

He found himself suffering fatigues and illnesses without gaining glory,

and engaged in a cause which he did not understand or appreciate. If it

had not been for his father's bad advice he, Luke, would now have been

working comfortably at a trade in the village that he had never wished to

leave.

After reading the letter the sergeant advanced a few steps till he was

quite out of sight of everybody, and then sat down on the bank by the

wayside.

When he arose half-an-hour later he looked withered and broken, and from

that day his natural spirits left him. Wounded to the quick by his son's

sarcastic stings, he indulged in liquor more and more frequently. His

wife had died some years before this date, and the sergeant lived alone

in the house which had been hers. One morning in the December under

notice the report of a gun had been heard on his premises, and on

entering the neighbours found him in a dying state. He had shot himself

with an old firelock that he used for scaring birds; and from what he had

said the day before, and the arrangements he had made for his decease,

there was no doubt that his end had been deliberately planned, as a

consequence of the despondency into which he had been thrown by his son's

letter. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se.

'Here's his son's letter,' said one of the Sidlinch men. ''Twas found in

his father's pocket. You can see by the state o't how many times he read

it over. Howsomever, the Lord's will be done, since it must, whether or

no.'

The grave was filled up and levelled, no mound being shaped over it. The

Sidlinch men then bade the Chalk-Newton choir good-night, and departed

with the cart in which they had brought the sergeant's body to the hill.

When their tread had died away from the ear, and the wind swept over the

isolated grave with its customary siffle of indifference, Lot Swanhills

turned and spoke to old Richard Toller, the hautboy player.

''Tis hard upon a man, and he a wold sojer, to serve en so, Richard. Not

that the sergeant was ever in a battle bigger than would go into a half-

acre paddock, that's true. Still, his soul ought to hae as good a chance

as another man's, all the same, hey?'

Richard replied that he was quite of the same opinion. 'What d'ye say to

lifting up a carrel over his grave, as 'tis Christmas, and no hurry to

begin down in parish, and 'twouldn't take up ten minutes, and not a soul

up here to say us nay, or know anything about it?'

Lot nodded assent. 'The man ought to hae his chances,' he repeated.

'Ye may as well spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by

what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man and

professed sceptic of the choir. 'But I'm agreed if the rest be.'

They thereupon placed themselves in a semicircle by the newly stirred

earth, and roused the dull air with the well-known Number Sixteen of

their collection, which Lot gave out as being the one he thought best

suited to the occasion and the mood

He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease',

In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.

'Jown it--we've never played to a dead man afore,' said Ezra Cattstock,

when, having concluded the last verse, they stood reflecting for a breath

or two. 'But it do seem more merciful than to go away and leave en, as

they t'other fellers have done.'

'Now backalong to Newton, and by the time we get overright the pa'son's

'twill be half after twelve,' said the leader.

They had not, however, done more than gather up their instruments when

the wind brought to their notice the noise of a vehicle rapidly driven up

the same lane from Sidlinch which the gravediggers had lately retraced.

To avoid being run over when moving on, they waited till the benighted

traveller, whoever he might be, should pass them where they stood in the

wider area of the Cross.

In half a minute the light of the lanterns fell upon a hired fly, drawn

by a steaming and jaded horse. It reached the hand-post, when a voice

from the inside cried, 'Stop here!' The driver pulled rein. The

carriage door was opened from within, and there leapt out a private

soldier in the uniform of some line regiment. He looked around, and was

apparently surprised to see the musicians standing there.

'Have you buried a man here?' he asked.

'No. We bain't Sidlinch folk, thank God; we be Newton choir. Though a

man is just buried here, that's true; and we've raised a carrel over the

poor mortal's natomy. What--do my eyes see before me young Luke Holway,

that went wi' his regiment to the East Indies, or do I see his spirit

straight from the battlefield? Be you the son that wrote the letter--'

'Don't--don't ask me. The funeral is over, then?'

'There wer no funeral, in a Christen manner of speaking. But's buried,

sure enough. You must have met the men going back in the empty cart.'

'Like a dog in a ditch, and all through me!'

He remained silent, looking at the grave, and they could not help pitying

him. 'My friends,' he said, 'I understand better now. You have, I

suppose, in neighbourly charity, sung peace to his soul? I thank you,

from my heart, for your kind pity. Yes; I am Sergeant Holway's miserable

son--I'm the son who has brought about his father's death, as truly as if

I had done it with my own hand!'

'No, no. Don't ye take on so, young man. He'd been naturally low for a

good while, off and on, so we hear.'

'We were out in the East when I wrote to him. Everything had seemed to

go wrong with me. Just after my letter had gone we were ordered home.

That's how it is you see me here. As soon as we got into barracks at

Casterbridge I heard o' this . . . Damn me! I'll dare to follow my

father, and make away with myself, too. It is the only thing left to

do!'

'Don't ye be rash, Luke Holway, I say again; but try to make amends by

your future life. And maybe your father will smile a smile down from

heaven upon 'ee for 't.'

He shook his head. 'I don't know about that!' he answered bitterly.

'Try and be worthy of your father at his best. 'Tis not too late.'

'D'ye think not? I fancy it is! . . . Well, I'll turn it over. Thank

you for your good counsel. I'll live for one thing, at any rate. I'll

move father's body to a decent Christian churchyard, if I do it with my

own hands. I can't save his life, but I can give him an honourable

grave. He shan't lie in this accursed place!'

'Ay, as our pa'son says, 'tis a barbarous custom they keep up at

Sidlinch, and ought to be done away wi'. The man a' old soldier, too.

You see, our pa'son is not like yours at Sidlinch.'

'He says it is barbarous, does he? So it is!' cried the soldier. 'Now

hearken, my friends.' Then he proceeded to inquire if they would

increase his indebtedness to them by undertaking the removal, privately,

of the body of the suicide to the churchyard, not of Sidlinch, a parish

he now hated, but of Chalk-Newton. He would give them all he possessed

to do it.

Lot asked Ezra Cattstock what he thought of it.

Cattstock, the 'cello player, who was also the sexton, demurred, and

advised the young soldier to sound the rector about it first. 'Mid be he

would object, and yet 'a mid'nt. The pa'son o' Sidlinch is a hard man, I

own ye, and 'a said if folk will kill theirselves in hot blood they must

take the consequences. But ours don't think like that at all, and might

allow it.'

'What's his name?'

'The honourable and reverent Mr. Oldham, brother to Lord Wessex. But you

needn't be afeard o' en on that account. He'll talk to 'ee like a common

man, if so be you haven't had enough drink to gie 'ee bad breath.'

'O, the same as formerly. I'll ask him. Thank you. And that duty

done--'

'What then?'

'There's war in Spain. I hear our next move is there. I'll try to show

myself to be what my father wished me. I don't suppose I shall--but I'll

try in my feeble way. That much I swear--here over his body. So help me

God.'

Luke smacked his palm against the white hand-post with such force that it

shook. 'Yes, there's war in Spain; and another chance for me to be

worthy of father.'

So the matter ended that night. That the private acted in one thing as

he had vowed to do soon became apparent, for during the Christmas week

the rector came into the churchyard when Cattstock was there, and asked

him to find a spot that would be suitable for the purpose of such an

interment, adding that he had slightly known the late sergeant, and was

not aware of any law which forbade him to assent to the removal, the

letter of the rule having been observed. But as he did not wish to seem

moved by opposition to his neighbour at Sidlinch, he had stipulated that

the act of charity should be carried out at night, and as privately as

possible, and that the grave should be in an obscure part of the

enclosure. 'You had better see the young man about it at once,' added

the rector.

But before Ezra had done anything Luke came down to his house. His

furlough had been cut short, owing to new developments of the war in the

Peninsula, and being obliged to go back to his regiment immediately, he

was compelled to leave the exhumation and reinterment to his friends.

Everything was paid for, and he implored them all to see it carried out

forthwith.

With this the soldier left. The next day Ezra, on thinking the matter

over, again went across to the rectory, struck with sudden misgiving. He

had remembered that the sergeant had been buried without a coffin, and he

was not sure that a stake had not been driven through him. The business

would be more troublesome than they had at first supposed.

'Yes, indeed!' murmured the rector. 'I am afraid it is not feasible

after all.'

The next event was the arrival of a headstone by carrier from the nearest

town; to be left at Mr. Ezra Cattstock's; all expenses paid. The sexton

and the carrier deposited the stone in the former's outhouse; and Ezra,

left alone, put on his spectacles and read the brief and simple

inscription:-

HERE LYETH THE BODY OF SAMUEL HOLWAY, LATE SERGEANT IN HIS MAJESTY'S

---D REGIMENT OF FOOT, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE DECEMBER THE 20TH, 180-.

ERECTED BY L. H.

'I AM NOT WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'

Ezra again called at the riverside rectory. 'The stone is come, sir. But

I'm afeard we can't do it nohow.'

'I should like to oblige him,' said the gentlemanly old incumbent. 'And

I would forego all fees willingly. Still, if you and the others don't

think you can carry it out, I am in doubt what to say.'

Well, sir; I've made inquiry of a Sidlinch woman as to his burial, and

what I thought seems true. They buried en wi' a new six-foot hurdle-saul

drough's body, from the sheep-pen up in North Ewelease though they won't

own to it now. And the question is, Is the moving worth while,

considering the awkwardness?'

'Have you heard anything more of the young man?'

Ezra had only heard that he had embarked that week for Spain with the

rest of the regiment. 'And if he's as desperate as 'a seemed, we shall

never see him here in England again.'

'It is an awkward case,' said the rector.

Ezra talked it over with the choir; one of whom suggested that the stone

might be erected at the crossroads. This was regarded as impracticable.

Another said that it might be set up in the churchyard without removing

the body; but this was seen to be dishonest. So nothing was done.

The headstone remained in Ezra's outhouse till, growing tired of seeing

it there, he put it away among the bushes at the bottom of his garden.

The subject was sometimes revived among them, but it always ended with:

'Considering how 'a was buried, we can hardly make a job o't.'

There was always the consciousness that Luke would never come back, an

impression strengthened by the disasters which were rumoured to have

befallen the army in Spain. This tended to make their inertness

permanent. The headstone grew green as it lay on its back under Ezra's

bushes; then a tree by the river was blown down, and, falling across the

stone, cracked it in three pieces. Ultimately the pieces became buried

in the leaves and mould.

Luke had not been born a Chalk-Newton man, and he had no relations left

in Sidlinch, so that no tidings of him reached either village throughout

the war. But after Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon there arrived at

Sidlinch one day an English sergeant-major covered with stripes and, as

it turned out, rich in glory. Foreign service had so totally changed

Luke Holway that it was not until he told his name that the inhabitants

recognized him as the sergeant's only son.

He had served with unswerving effectiveness through the Peninsular

campaigns under Wellington; had fought at Busaco, Fuentes d'Onore, Ciudad

Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo; and had

now returned to enjoy a more than earned pension and repose in his native

district.

He hardly stayed in Sidlinch longer than to take a meal on his arrival.

The same evening he started on foot over the hill to Chalk-Newton,

passing the hand-post, and saying as he glanced at the spot, 'Thank God:

he's not there!' Nightfall was approaching when he reached the latter

village; but he made straight for the churchyard. On his entering it

there remained light enough to discern the headstones by, and these he

narrowly scanned. But though he searched the front part by the road, and

the back part by the river, what he sought he could not find--the grave

of Sergeant Holway, and a memorial bearing the inscription: 'I AM NOT

WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON.'

He left the churchyard and made inquiries. The honourable and reverend

old rector was dead, and so were many of the choir; but by degrees the

sergeant-major learnt that his father still lay at the cross-roads in

Long Ash Lane.

Luke pursued his way moodily homewards, to do which, in the natural

course, he would be compelled to repass the spot, there being no other

road between the two villages. But he could not now go by that place,

vociferous with reproaches in his father's tones; and he got over the

hedge and wandered deviously through the ploughed fields to avoid the

scene. Through many a fight and fatigue Luke had been sustained by the

thought that he was restoring the family honour and making noble amends.

Yet his father lay still in degradation. It was rather a sentiment than

a fact that his father's body had been made to suffer for his own

misdeeds; but to his super-sensitiveness it seemed that his efforts to

retrieve his character and to propitiate the shade of the insulted one

had ended in failure.

He endeavoured, however, to shake off his lethargy, and, not liking the

associations of Sidlinch, hired a small cottage at Chalk-Newton which had

long been empty. Here he lived alone, becoming quite a hermit, and

allowing no woman to enter the house.

The Christmas after taking up his abode herein he was sitting in the

chimney corner by himself, when he heard faint notes in the distance, and

soon a melody burst forth immediately outside his own window, it came

from the carol-singers, as usual; and though many of the old hands, Ezra

and Lot included, had gone to their rest, the same old carols were still

played out of the same old books. There resounded through the sergeant-

major's window-shutters the familiar lines that the deceased choir had

rendered over his father's grave:-

He comes' the pri'-soners to' re-lease',

In Sa'-tan's bon'-dage held'.

When they had finished they went on to another house, leaving him to

silence and loneliness as before.

The candle wanted snuffing, but he did not snuff it, and he sat on till

it had burnt down into the socket and made waves of shadow on the

ceiling.

The Christmas cheerfulness of next morning was broken at breakfast-time

by tragic intelligence which went down the village like wind. Sergeant-

Major Holway had been found shot through the head by his own hand at the

cross-roads in Long Ash Lane where his father lay buried.

On the table in the cottage he had left a piece of paper, on which he had

written his wish that he might be buried at the Cross beside his father.

But the paper was accidentally swept to the floor, and overlooked till

after his funeral, which took place in the ordinary way in the

churchyard.

Christmas 1897.

ENTER A DRAGOON

I lately had a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is

answerable for the truth of this story). It was that of going over a

doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar--a house,

that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down

during the following week. Some of the thatch, brown and rotten as the

gills of old mushrooms, had, indeed, been removed before I walked over

the building. Seeing that it was only a very small house--which is

usually called a 'cottage-residence'--situated in a remote hamlet, and

that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to

think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls

and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents

had taken place therein--to reckon only those which had come to my own

knowledge. And no doubt there were many more of which I had never heard.

It stood at the top of a garden stretching down to the lane or street

that ran through a hermit-group of dwellings in Mellstock parish. From a

green gate at the lower entrance, over which the thorn hedge had been

shaped to an arch by constant clippings, a gravel path ascended between

the box edges of once trim raspberry, strawberry, and vegetable plots,

towards the front door. This was in colour an ancient and bleached green

that could be rubbed off with the finger, and it bore a small

long-featured brass knocker covered with verdigris in its crevices. For

some years before this eve of demolition the homestead had degenerated,

and been divided into two tenements to serve as cottages for farm

labourers; but in its prime it had indisputable claim to be considered

neat, pretty, and genteel.

The variety of incidents above alluded to was mainly owing to the nature

of the tenure, whereby the place had been occupied by families not quite

of the kind customary in such spots--people whose circumstances,

position, or antecedents were more or less of a critical happy-go-lucky

cast. And of these residents the family whose term comprised the story I

wish to relate was that of Mr. Jacob Paddock the market-gardener, who

dwelt there for some years with his wife and grown-up daughter.

I

An evident commotion was agitating the premises, which jerked busy sounds

across the front plot, resembling those of a disturbed hive. If a member

of the household appeared at the door it was with a countenance of

abstraction and concern.

Evening began to bend over the scene; and the other inhabitants of the

hamlet came out to draw water, their common well being in the public road

opposite the garden and house of the Paddocks. Having wound up their

bucketsfull respectively they lingered, and spoke significantly together.

From their words any casual listener might have gathered information of

what had occurred.

The woodman who lived nearest the site of the story told most of the

tale. Selina, the daughter of the Paddocks opposite, had been surprised

that afternoon by receiving a letter from her once intended husband, then

a corporal, but now a sergeant-major of dragoons, whom she had hitherto

supposed to be one of the slain in the Battle of the Alma two or three

years before.

'She picked up wi'en against her father's wish, as we know, and before he

got his stripes,' their informant continued. 'Not but that the man was

as hearty a feller as you'd meet this side o' London. But Jacob, you

see, wished her to do better, and one can understand it. However, she

was determined to stick to him at that time; and for what happened she

was not much to blame, so near as they were to matrimony when the war

broke out and spoiled all.'

'Even the very pig had been killed for the wedding,' said a woman, 'and

the barrel o' beer ordered in. O, the man meant honourable enough. But

to be off in two days to fight in a foreign country--'twas natural of her

father to say they should wait till he got back.'

'And he never came,' murmured one in the shade.

'The war ended but her man never turned up again. She was not sure he

was killed, but was too proud, or too timid, to go and hunt for him.'

'One reason why her father forgave her when he found out how matters

stood was, as he said plain at the time, that he liked the man, and could

see that he meant to act straight. So the old folks made the best of

what they couldn't mend, and kept her there with 'em, when some wouldn't.

Time has proved seemingly that he did mean to act straight, now that he

has writ to her that he's coming. She'd have stuck to him all through

the time, 'tis my belief; if t'other hadn't come along.'

'At the time of the courtship,' resumed the woodman, 'the regiment was

quartered in Casterbridge Barracks, and he and she got acquainted by his

calling to buy a penn'orth of rathe-ripes off that tree yonder in her

father's orchard--though 'twas said he seed her over hedge as well as the

apples. He declared 'twas a kind of apple he much fancied; and he called

for a penn'orth every day till the tree was cleared. It ended in his

calling for her.'

''Twas a thousand pities they didn't jine up at once and ha' done wi' it.

'Well; better late than never, if so be he'll have her now. But, Lord,

she'd that faith in 'en that she'd no more belief that he was alive, when

a' didn't come, than that the undermost man in our churchyard was alive.

She'd never have thought of another but for that--O no!'

''Tis awkward, altogether, for her now.'

'Still she hadn't married wi' the new man. Though to be sure she would

have committed it next week, even the licence being got, they say, for

she'd have no banns this time, the first being so unfortunate.'

'Perhaps the sergeant-major will think he's released, and go as he came.'

'O, not as I reckon. Soldiers bain't particular, and she's a tidy piece

o' furniture still. What will happen is that she'll have her soldier,

and break off with the master-wheelwright, licence or no--daze me if she

won't.'

In the progress of these desultory conjectures the form of another

neighbour arose in the gloom. She nodded to the people at the well, who

replied 'G'd night, Mrs. Stone,' as she passed through Mr. Paddock's gate

towards his door. She was an intimate friend of the latter's household,

and the group followed her with their eyes up the path and past the

windows, which were now lighted up by candles inside.

II

Mrs. Stone paused at the door, knocked, and was admitted by Selina's

mother, who took her visitor at once into the parlour on the left hand,

where a table was partly spread for supper. On the 'beaufet' against the

wall stood probably the only object which would have attracted the eye of

a local stranger in an otherwise ordinarily furnished room, a great plum-

cake guarded as if it were a curiosity by a glass shade of the kind seen

in museums--square, with a wooden back like those enclosing stuffed

specimens of rare feather or fur. This was the mummy of the cake

intended in earlier days for the wedding-feast of Selina and the soldier,

which had been religiously and lovingly preserved by the former as a

testimony to her intentional respectability in spite of an untoward

subsequent circumstance, which will be mentioned. This relic was now as

dry as a brick, and seemed to belong to a pre-existent civilization. Till

quite recently, Selina had been in the habit of pausing before it daily,

and recalling the accident whose consequences had thrown a shadow over

her life ever since--that of which the water-drawers had spoken--the

sudden news one morning that the Route had come for the ---th Dragoons,

two days only being the interval before departure; the hurried

consultation as to what should be done, the second time of asking being

past but not the third; and the decision that it would be unwise to

solemnize matrimony in such haphazard circumstances, even if it were

possible, which was doubtful.

Before the fire the young woman in question was now seated on a low

stool, in the stillness of reverie, and a toddling boy played about the

floor around her.

'Ah, Mrs. Stone!' said Selina, rising slowly. 'How kind of you to come

in. You'll bide to supper? Mother has told you the strange news, of

course?'

'No. But I heard it outside, that is, that you'd had a letter from Mr.

Clark--Sergeant-Major Clark, as they say he is now--and that he's coming

to make it up with 'ee.'

'Yes; coming to-night--all the way from the north of England where he's

quartered. I don't know whether I'm happy or--frightened at it. Of

course I always believed that if he was alive he'd come and keep his

solemn vow to me. But when it is printed that a man is killed--what can

you think?'

'It was printed?'

'Why, yes. After the Battle of the Alma the book of the names of the

killed and wounded was nailed up against Casterbridge Town Hall door.

'Twas on a Saturday, and I walked there o' purpose to read and see for

myself; for I'd heard that his name was down. There was a crowd of

people round the book, looking for the names of relations; and I can mind

that when they saw me they made way for me--knowing that we'd been just

going to be married--and that, as you may say, I belonged to him. Well,

I reached up my arm, and turned over the farrels of the book, and under

the "killed" I read his surname, but instead of "John" they'd printed

"James," and I thought 'twas a mistake, and that it must be he. Who

could have guessed there were two nearly of one name in one regiment.'

'Well--he's coming to finish the wedding of 'ee as may be said; so never

mind, my dear. All's well that ends well.'

'That's what he seems to say. But then he has not heard yet about Mr.

Miller; and that's what rather terrifies me. Luckily my marriage with

him next week was to have been by licence, and not banns, as in John's

case; and it was not so well known on that account. Still, I don't know

what to think.'

'Everything seems to come just 'twixt cup and lip with 'ee, don't it now,

Miss Paddock. Two weddings broke off--'tis odd! How came you to accept

Mr. Miller, my dear?'

'He's been so good and faithful! Not minding about the child at all; for

he knew the rights of the story. He's dearly fond o' Johnny, you

know--just as if 'twere his own--isn't he, my duck? Do Mr. Miller love

you or don't he?'

'Iss! An' I love Mr. Miller,' said the toddler.

'Well, you see, Mrs. Stone, he said he'd make me a comfortable home; and

thinking 'twould be a good thing for Johnny, Mr. Miller being so much

better off than me, I agreed at last, just as a widow might--which is

what I have always felt myself; ever since I saw what I thought was

John's name printed there. I hope John will forgive me!'

'So he will forgive 'ee, since 'twas no manner of wrong to him. He ought

to have sent 'ee a line, saying 'twas another man.'

Selina's mother entered. 'We've not known of this an hour, Mrs. Stone,'

she said. 'The letter was brought up from Lower Mellstock Post-office by

one of the school children, only this afternoon. Mr. Miller was coming

here this very night to settle about the wedding doings. Hark! Is that

your father? Or is it Mr. Miller already come?'

The footsteps entered the porch; there was a brushing on the mat, and the

door of the room sprung back to disclose a rubicund man about thirty

years of age, of thriving master-mechanic appearance and obviously

comfortable temper. On seeing the child, and before taking any notice

whatever of the elders, the comer made a noise like the crowing of a cock

and flapped his arms as if they were wings, a method of entry which had

the unqualified admiration of Johnny.

'Yes--it is he,' said Selina constrainedly advancing.

'What--were you all talking about me, my dear?' said the genial young man

when he had finished his crowing and resumed human manners. 'Why what's

the matter,' he went on. 'You look struck all of a heap.' Mr. Miller

spread an aspect of concern over his own face, and drew a chair up to the

fire.

'O mother, would you tell Mr. Miller, if he don't know?'

'Mister Miller! and going to be married in six days!' he interposed.

'Ah--he don't know it yet!' murmured Mrs. Paddock.

'Know what?'

'Well--John Clark--now Sergeant-Major Clark--wasn't shot at Alma after

all. 'Twas another of almost the same name.'

'Now that's interesting! There were several cases like that.'

'And he's home again; and he's coming here to-night to see her.'

'Whatever shall I say, that he may not be offended with what I've done?'

interposed Selina.

'But why should it matter if he be?'

'O! I must agree to be his wife if he forgives me--of course I must.'

'Must! But why not say nay, Selina, even if he do forgive 'ee?'

'O no! How can I without being wicked? You were very very kind, Mr.

Miller, to ask me to have you; no other man would have done it after what

had happened; and I agreed, even though I did not feel half so warm as I

ought. Yet it was entirely owing to my believing him in the grave, as I

knew that if he were not he would carry out his promise; and this shows

that I was right in trusting him.'

'Yes . . . He must be a goodish sort of fellow,' said Mr. Miller, for a

moment so impressed with the excellently faithful conduct of the sergeant-

major of dragoons that he disregarded its effect upon his own position.

He sighed slowly and added, 'Well, Selina, 'tis for you to say. I love

you, and I love the boy; and there's my chimney-corner and sticks o'

furniture ready for 'ee both.'

'Yes, I know! But I mustn't hear it any more now,' murmured Selina

quickly. 'John will be here soon. I hope he'll see how it all was when

I tell him. If so be I could have written it to him it would have been

better.'

'You think he doesn't know a single word about our having been on the

brink o't. But perhaps it's the other way--he's heard of it and that may

have brought him.

'Ah--perhaps he has!' she said brightening. 'And already forgives me.'

'If not, speak out straight and fair, and tell him exactly how it fell

out. If he's a man he'll see it.'

'O he's a man true enough. But I really do think I shan't have to tell

him at all, since you've put it to me that way!'

As it was now Johnny's bedtime he was carried upstairs, and when Selina

came down again her mother observed with some anxiety, 'I fancy Mr. Clark

must be here soon if he's coming; and that being so, perhaps Mr. Miller

wouldn't mind--wishing us good-night! since you are so determined to

stick to your sergeant-major.' A little bitterness bubbled amid the

closing words. 'It would be less awkward, Mr. Miller not being here--if

he will allow me to say it.'

'To be sure; to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant

conviction, rising alertly from his chair. 'Lord bless my soul,' he

said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six

days! But Selina--you're right. You do belong to the child's father

since he's alive. I'll try to make the best of it.'

Before the generous Miller had got further there came a knock to the door

accompanied by the noise of wheels.

'I thought I heard something driving up!' said Mrs Paddock.

They heard Mr. Paddock, who had been smoking in the room opposite, rise

and go to the door, and in a moment a voice familiar enough to Selina was

audibly saying, 'At last I am here again--not without many interruptions!

How is it with 'ee, Mr. Paddock? And how is she? Thought never to see

me again, I suppose?'

A step with a clink of spurs in it struck upon the entry floor.

'Danged if I bain't catched!' murmured Mr. Miller, forgetting company-

speech. 'Never mind--I may as well meet him here as elsewhere; and I

should like to see the chap, and make friends with en, as he seems one o'

the right sort.' He returned to the fireplace just as the sergeant-major

was ushered in.

III

He was a good specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not

unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might

have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his

neck, the high stock being still worn. He was much stouter than when

Selina had parted from him. Although she had not meant to be

demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held her

in his arms and kissed her.

Then in much agitation she whispered something to him, at which he seemed

to be much surprised.

'He's just put to bed,' she continued. 'You can go up and see him. I

knew you'd come if you were alive! But I had quite gi'd you up for dead.

You've been home in England ever since the war ended?'

'Yes, dear.'

'Why didn't you come sooner?'

'That's just what I ask myself! Why was I such a sappy as not to hurry

here the first day I set foot on shore! Well, who'd have thought it--you

are as pretty as ever!'

He relinquished her to peep upstairs a little way, where, by looking

through the ballusters, he could see Johnny's cot just within an open

door. On his stepping down again Mr. Miller was preparing to depart.

'Now, what's this? I am sorry to see anybody going the moment I've

come,' expostulated the sergeant-major. 'I thought we might make an

evening of it. There's a nine gallon cask o' "Phoenix" beer outside in

the trap, and a ham, and half a rawmil' cheese; for I thought you might

be short o' forage in a lonely place like this; and it struck me we might

like to ask in a neighbour or two. But perhaps it would be taking a

liberty?'

'O no, not at all,' said Mr. Paddock, who was now in the room, in a

judicial measured manner. 'Very thoughtful of 'ee, only 'twas not

necessary, for we had just laid in an extry stock of eatables and

drinkables in preparation for the coming event.'

''Twas very kind, upon my heart,' said the soldier, 'to think me worth

such a jocund preparation, since you could only have got my letter this

morning.'

Selina gazed at her father to stop him, and exchanged embarrassed glances

with Miller. Contrary to her hopes Sergeant-Major Clark plainly did not

know that the preparations referred to were for something quite other

than his own visit.

The movement of the horse outside, and the impatient tapping of a whip-

handle upon the vehicle reminded them that Clark's driver was still in

waiting. The provisions were brought into the house, and the cart

dismissed. Miller, with very little pressure indeed, accepted an

invitation to supper, and a few neighbours were induced to come in to

make up a cheerful party.

During the laying of the meal, and throughout its continuance, Selina,

who sat beside her first intended husband, tried frequently to break the

news to him of her engagement to the other--now terminated so suddenly,

and so happily for her heart, and her sense of womanly virtue. But the

talk ran entirely upon the late war; and though fortified by half a horn

of the strong ale brought by the sergeant-major she decided that she

might have a better opportunity when supper was over of revealing the

situation to him in private.

Having supped, Clark leaned back at ease in his chair and looked around.

'We used sometimes to have a dance in that other room after supper,

Selina dear, I recollect. We used to clear out all the furniture into

this room before beginning. Have you kept up such goings on?'

'No, not at all!' said his sweetheart, sadly.

'We were not unlikely to revive it in a few days,' said Mr. Paddock.

'But, howsomever, there's seemingly many a slip, as the saying is.'

'Yes, I'll tell John all about that by and by!' interposed Selina; at

which, perceiving that the secret which he did not like keeping was to be

kept even yet, her father held his tongue with some show of testiness.

The subject of a dance having been broached, to put the thought in

practice was the feeling of all. Soon after the tables and chairs were

borne from the opposite room to this by zealous hands, and two of the

villagers sent home for a fiddle and tambourine, when the majority began

to tread a measure well known in that secluded vale. Selina naturally

danced with the sergeant-major, not altogether to her father's

satisfaction, and to the real uneasiness of her mother, both of whom

would have preferred a postponement of festivities till the rashly

anticipated relationship between their daughter and Clark in the past had

been made fact by the church's ordinances. They did not, however,

express a positive objection, Mr. Paddock remembering, with

self-reproach, that it was owing to his original strongly expressed

disapproval of Selina's being a soldier's wife that the wedding had been

delayed, and finally hindered--with worse consequences than were

expected; and ever since the misadventure brought about by his government

he had allowed events to steer their own courses.

'My tails will surely catch in your spurs, John!' murmured the daughter

of the house, as she whirled around upon his arm with the rapt soul and

look of a somnambulist. 'I didn't know we should dance, or I would have

put on my other frock.'

'I'll take care, my love. We've danced here before. Do you think your

father objects to me now? I've risen in rank. I fancy he's still a

little against me.'

'He has repented, times enough.'

'And so have I! If I had married you then 'twould have saved many a

misfortune. I have sometimes thought it might have been possible to rush

the ceremony through somehow before I left; though we were only in the

second asking, were we? And even if I had come back straight here when

we returned from the Crimea, and married you then, how much happier I

should have been!'

'Dear John, to say that! Why didn't you?'

'O--dilatoriness and want of thought, and a fear of facing your father

after so long. I was in hospital a great while, you know. But how

familiar the place seems again! What's that I saw on the beaufet in the

other room? It never used to be there. A sort of withered corpse of a

cake--not an old bride-cake surely?'

'Yes, John, ours. 'Tis the very one that was made for our wedding three

years ago.'

'Sakes alive! Why, time shuts up together, and all between then and now

seems not to have been! What became of that wedding-gown that they were

making in this room, I remember--a bluish, whitish, frothy thing?'

'I have that too.'

'Really! . . . Why, Selina--'

'Yes!'

'Why not put it on now?'

'Wouldn't it seem--. And yet, O how I should like to! It would remind

them all, if we told them what it was, how we really meant to be married

on that bygone day!' Her eyes were again laden with wet.

'Yes . . . The pity that we didn't--the pity!' Moody mournfulness seemed

to hold silent awhile one not naturally taciturn. 'Well--will you?' he

said.

'I will--the next dance, if mother don't mind.'

Accordingly, just before the next figure was formed, Selina disappeared,

and speedily came downstairs in a creased and box-worn, but still airy

and pretty, muslin gown, which was indeed the very one that had been

meant to grace her as a bride three years before.

'It is dreadfully old-fashioned,' she apologized.

'Not at all. What a grand thought of mine! Now, let's to't again.'

She explained to some of them, as he led her to the second dance, what

the frock had been meant for, and that she had put it on at his request.

And again athwart and around the room they went.

'You seem the bride!' he said.

'But I couldn't wear this gown to be married in now!' she replied,

ecstatically, 'or I shouldn't have put it on and made it dusty. It is

really too old-fashioned, and so folded and fretted out, you can't think.

That was with my taking it out so many times to look at. I have never

put it on--never--till now!'

'Selina, I am thinking of giving up the army. Will you emigrate with me

to New Zealand? I've an uncle out there doing well, and he'd soon help

me to making a larger income. The English army is glorious, but it ain't

altogether enriching.'

'Of course, anywhere that you decide upon. Is it healthy there for

Johnny?'

'A lovely climate. And I shall never be happy in England . . . Aha!' he

concluded again, with a bitterness of unexpected strength, 'would to

Heaven I had come straight back here!'

As the dance brought round one neighbour after another the re-united pair

were thrown into juxtaposition with Bob Heartall among the rest who had

been called in; one whose chronic expression was that he carried inside

him a joke on the point of bursting with its own vastness. He took

occasion now to let out a little of its quality, shaking his head at

Selina as he addressed her in an undertone--

'This is a bit of a topper to the bridegroom, ho ho! 'Twill teach en the

liberty you'll expect when you've married en!'

'What does he mean by a "topper,"' the sergeant-major asked, who, not

being of local extraction, despised the venerable local language, and

also seemed to suppose 'bridegroom' to be an anticipatory name for

himself. 'I only hope I shall never be worse treated than you've treated

me to-night!'

Selina looked frightened. 'He didn't mean you, dear,' she said as they

moved on. 'We thought perhaps you knew what had happened, owing to your

coming just at this time. Had you--heard anything about--what I

intended?'

'Not a breath--how should I--away up in Yorkshire? It was by the merest

accident that I came just at this date to make peace with you for my

delay.'

'I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartholomew Miller. That's what it

is! I would have let 'ee know by letter, but there was no time, only

hearing from 'ee this afternoon . . . You won't desert me for it, will

you, John? Because, as you know, I quite supposed you dead, and--and--'

Her eyes were full of tears of trepidation, and he might have felt a sob

heaving within her.

IV

The soldier was silent during two or three double bars of the tune. 'When

were you to have been married to the said Mr. Bartholomew Miller?' he

inquired.

'Quite soon.'

'How soon?'

'Next week--O yes--just the same as it was with you and me. There's a

strange fate of interruption hanging over me, I sometimes think! He had

bought the licence, which I preferred so that it mightn't be like--ours.

But it made no difference to the fate of it.'

'Had bought the licence! The devil!'

'Don't be angry, dear John. I didn't know!'

'No, no, I'm not angry.'

'It was so kind of him, considering!'

'Yes . . . I see, of course, how natural your action was--never thinking

of seeing me any more! Is it the Mr. Miller who is in this dance?'

'Yes.'

Clark glanced round upon Bartholomew and was silent again, for some

little while, and she stole a look at him, to find that he seemed

changed. 'John, you look ill!' she almost sobbed. ''Tisn't me, is it?'

'O dear, no. Though I hadn't, somehow, expected it. I can't find fault

with you for a moment--and I don't . . . This is a deuce of a long dance,

don't you think? We've been at it twenty minutes if a second, and the

figure doesn't allow one much rest. I'm quite out of breath.'

'They like them so dreadfully long here. Shall we drop out? Or I'll

stop the fiddler.'

'O no, no, I think I can finish. But although I look healthy enough I

have never been so strong as I formerly was, since that long illness I

had in the hospital at Scutari.'

'And I knew nothing about it!'

'You couldn't, dear, as I didn't write. What a fool I have been

altogether!' He gave a twitch, as of one in pain. 'I won't dance again

when this one is over. The fact is I have travelled a long way to-day,

and it seems to have knocked me up a bit.'

There could be no doubt that the sergeant-major was unwell, and Selina

made herself miserable by still believing that her story was the cause of

his ailment. Suddenly he said in a changed voice, and she perceived that

he was paler than ever: 'I must sit down.'

Letting go her waist he went quickly to the other room. She followed,

and found him in the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands and

arms, which were resting on the table.

'What's the matter?' said her father, who sat there dozing by the fire.

'John isn't well . . . We are going to New Zealand when we are married,

father. A lovely country! John, would you like something to drink?'

'A drop o' that Schiedam of old Owlett's, that's under stairs, perhaps,'

suggested her father. 'Not that nowadays 'tis much better than licensed

liquor.'

'John,' she said, putting her face close to his and pressing his arm.

'Will you have a drop of spirits or something?'

He did not reply, and Selina observed that his ear and the side of his

face were quite white. Convinced that his illness was serious, a growing

dismay seized hold of her. The dance ended; her mother came in, and

learning what had happened, looked narrowly at the sergeant-major.

'We must not let him lie like that, lift him up,' she said. 'Let him

rest in the window-bench on some cushions.'

They unfolded his arms and hands as they lay clasped upon the table, and

on lifting his head found his features to bear the very impress of death

itself. Bartholomew Miller, who had now come in, assisted Mr. Paddock to

make a comfortable couch in the window-seat, where they stretched out

Clark upon his back.

Still he seemed unconscious. 'We must get a doctor,' said Selina. 'O,

my dear John, how is it you be taken like this?'

'My impression is that he's dead!' murmured Mr. Paddock. 'He don't

breathe enough to move a tomtit's feather.'

There were plenty to volunteer to go for a doctor, but as it would be at

least an hour before he could get there the case seemed somewhat

hopeless. The dancing-party ended as unceremoniously as it had begun;

but the guests lingered round the premises till the doctor should arrive.

When he did come the sergeant-major's extremities were already cold, and

there was no doubt that death had overtaken him almost at the moment that

he had sat down.

The medical practitioner quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's

theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden

collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate

cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted

by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and

then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon a heart

enfeebled by fatty degeneration after the privations of a Crimean winter

and other trying experiences, the coincidence of the sad event with any

disclosure of hers being a pure accident.

This conclusion, however, did not dislodge Selina's opinion that the

shock of her statement had been the immediate stroke which had felled a

constitution so undermined.

V

At this date the Casterbridge Barracks were cavalry quarters, their

adaptation to artillery having been effected some years later. It had

been owing to the fact that the ---th Dragoons, in which John Clark had

served, happened to be lying there that Selina made his acquaintance. At

the time of his death the barracks were occupied by the Scots Greys, but

when the pathetic circumstances of the sergeant-major's end became known

in the town the officers of the Greys offered the services of their fine

reed and brass band, that he might have a funeral marked by due military

honours. His body was accordingly removed to the barracks, and carried

thence to the churchyard in the Durnover quarter on the following

afternoon, one of the Greys' most ancient and docile chargers being

blacked up to represent Clark's horse on the occasion.

Everybody pitied Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the

corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this

part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought

none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning

carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out

of sight during the slow and dramatic march through the town to the tune

from Saul. When the interment had taken place, the volleys been fired,

and the return journey begun, it was with something like a shock that she

found the military escort to be moving at a quick march to the lively

strains of 'Off she goes!' as if all care for the sergeant-major was

expected to be ended with the late discharge of the carbines. It was, by

chance, the very tune to which they had been footing when he died, and

unable to bear its notes, she hastily told her driver to drop behind. The

band and military party diminished up the High Street, and Selina turned

over Swan bridge and homeward to Mellstock.

Then recommenced for her a life whose incidents were precisely of a suit

with those which had preceded the soldier's return; but how different in

her appreciation of them! Her narrow miss of the recovered

respectability they had hoped for from that tardy event worked upon her

parents as an irritant, and after the first week or two of her mourning

her life with them grew almost insupportable. She had impulsively taken

to herself the weeds of a widow, for such she seemed to herself to be,

and clothed little Johnny in sables likewise. This assumption of a moral

relationship to the deceased, which she asserted to be only not a legal

one by two most unexpected accidents, led the old people to indulge in

sarcasm at her expense whenever they beheld her attire, though all the

while it cost them more pain to utter than it gave her to hear it. Having

become accustomed by her residence at home to the business carried on by

her father, she surprised them one day by going off with the child to

Chalk-Newton, in the direction of the town of Ivell, and opening a

miniature fruit and vegetable shop, attending Ivell market with her

produce. Her business grew somewhat larger, and it was soon sufficient

to enable her to support herself and the boy in comfort. She called

herself 'Mrs. John Clark' from the day of leaving home, and painted the

name on her signboard--no man forbidding her.

By degrees the pain of her state was forgotten in her new circumstances,

and getting to be generally accepted as the widow of a sergeant-major of

dragoons--an assumption which her modest and mournful demeanour seemed to

substantiate--her life became a placid one, her mind being nourished by

the melancholy luxury of dreaming what might have been her future in New

Zealand with John, if he had only lived to take her there. Her only

travels now were a journey to Ivell on market-days, and once a fortnight

to the churchyard in which Clark lay, there to tend, with Johnny's

assistance, as widows are wont to do, the flowers she had planted upon

his grave.

On a day about eighteen months after his unexpected decease, Selina was

surprised in her lodging over her little shop by a visit from Bartholomew

Miller. He had called on her once or twice before, on which occasions he

had used without a word of comment the name by which she was known.

'I've come this time,' he said, 'less because I was in this direction

than to ask you, Mrs. Clark, what you mid well guess. I've come o'

purpose, in short.'

She smiled.

''Tis to ask me again to marry you?'

'Yes, of course. You see, his coming back for 'ee proved what I always

believed of 'ee, though others didn't. There's nobody but would be glad

to welcome you to our parish again, now you've showed your independence

and acted up to your trust in his promise. Well, my dear, will you

come?'

'I'd rather bide as Mrs. Clark, I think,' she answered. 'I am not

ashamed of my position at all; for I am John's widow in the eyes of

Heaven.'

'I quite agree--that's why I've come. Still, you won't like to be always

straining at this shop-keeping and market-standing; and 'twould be better

for Johnny if you had nothing to do but tend him.'

He here touched the only weak spot in Selina's resistance to his

proposal--the good of the boy. To promote that there were other men she

might have married offhand without loving them if they had asked her to;

but though she had known the worthy speaker from her youth, she could not

for the moment fancy herself happy as Mrs. Miller.

He paused awhile. 'I ought to tell 'ee, Mrs. Clark,' he said by and by,

'that marrying is getting to be a pressing question with me. Not on my

own account at all. The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am

away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should

be another person in the house with her besides me. That's the practical

consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my

wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so

much.'

She said something about there being far better women than she, and other

natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for

feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was. However, Selina would

not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any

rate just then. He went away, after taking tea with her, without

discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.

VI

After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.

Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued,

whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must have known, she

thought, of this custom of hers. But though the churchyard was not

nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he

never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.

An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother,

who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the

other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's

daughter that he knew there. His chief motive, it was reported, had been

less one of love than a wish to provide a companion for his aged mother.

Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and possibly

the only opportunity of settling in life after what had happened, and for

a moment she regretted her independence. But she became calm on

reflection, and to fortify herself in her course started that afternoon

to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which she took the same sober

pleasure as at first.

On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as

usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a

respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over Clark's

turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some ivy-roots that

Selina had reverently planted there to form an evergreen mantle over the

mound.

'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward so

excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the tug she

gave his hand in her sudden start.

'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.

'Why yes! I planted it there--on my husband's grave.'

'Your husband's!'

'Yes. The late Sergeant-Major Clark. Anyhow, as good as my husband, for

he was just going to be.'

'Indeed. But who may be my husband, if not he? I am the only Mrs. John

Clark, widow of the late Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, and this is his only

son and heir.'

'How can that be?' faltered Selina, her throat seeming to stick together

as she just began to perceive its possibility. 'He had been--going to

marry me twice--and we were going to New Zealand.'

'Ah!--I remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and not

unkindly. 'You must be Selina; he spoke of you now and then, and said

that his relations with you would always be a weight on his conscience.

Well; the history of my life with him is soon told. When he came back

from the Crimea he became acquainted with me at my home in the north, and

we were married within a month of first knowing each other.

Unfortunately, after living together a few months, we could not agree;

and after a particularly sharp quarrel, in which, perhaps, I was most in

the wrong--as I don't mind owning here by his graveside--he went away

from me, declaring he would buy his discharge and emigrate to New

Zealand, and never come back to me any more. The next thing I heard was

that he had died suddenly at Mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had

left me in such anger to live no more with me, I wouldn't come down to

his funeral, or do anything in relation to him. 'Twas temper, I know,

but that was the fact. Even if we had parted friends it would have been

a serious expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who

wasn't left so very well off . . . I am sorry I pulled up your ivy-roots;

but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of the

country.'

December 1899.

A TRYST AT AN ANCIENT EARTH WORK

At one's every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with

an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and

consider. The eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the

consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of

vantage. Across the intervening levels the gale races in a straight line

from the fort, as if breathed out of it hitherward. With the shifting of

the clouds the faces of the steeps vary in colour and in shade, broad

lights appearing where mist and vagueness had prevailed, dissolving in

their turn into melancholy gray, which spreads over and eclipses the

luminous bluffs. In this so-thought immutable spectacle all is change.

Out of the invisible marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly

into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the

indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the

tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating

signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected

stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds

rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking with their bagging

bosoms the uppermost flyers.

The profile of the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a mile

eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay. It is varied with

protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts,

wens, knuckles, and hips. It may indeed be likened to an enormous many-

limbed organism of an antediluvian time--partaking of the cephalopod in

shape--lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides

its substance, while revealing its contour. This dull green mantle of

herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed

for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle,

but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of these

environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the incline as

they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the steepness

baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae of waves

pausing on the curl. The peculiar place of which these are some of the

features is 'Mai-Dun,' 'The Castle of the Great Hill,' said to be the

Dunium of Ptolemy, the capital of the Durotriges, which eventually came

into Roman occupation, and was finally deserted on their withdrawal from

the island.

* * * * *

The evening is followed by a night on which an invisible moon bestows a

subdued, yet pervasive light--without radiance, as without blackness.

From the spot whereon I am ensconced in a cottage, a mile away, the fort

has now ceased to be visible; yet, as by day, to anybody whose thoughts

have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the

form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if

it had a voice. Moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the

intervening arable flats with vapours brought directly from its sides.

The midnight hour for which there has been occasion to wait at length

arrives, and I journey towards the stronghold in obedience to a request

urged earlier in the day. It concerns an appointment, which I rather

regret my decision to keep now that night is come. The route thither is

hedgeless and treeless--I need not add deserted. The moonlight is

sufficient to disclose the pale riband-like surface of the way as it

trails along between the expanses of darker fallow. Though the road

passes near the fortress it does not conduct directly to its fronts. As

the place is without an inhabitant, so it is without a trackway. So

presently leaving the macadamized road to pursue its course elsewhither,

I step off upon the fallow, and plod stumblingly across it. The castle

looms out off the shade by degrees, like a thing waking up and asking

what I want there. It is now so enlarged by nearness that its whole

shape cannot be taken in at one view. The ploughed ground ends as the

rise sharpens, the sloping basement of grass begins, and I climb upward

to invade Mai-Dun.

Impressive by day as this largest Ancient-British work in the kingdom

undoubtedly is, its impressiveness is increased now. After standing

still and spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its

size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing

closeness. A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which

proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. The slope that

I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. Its track

can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered

grass-bents--the only produce of this upland summit except moss. Four

minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. It is

only the crest of the outer rampart. Immediately within this a chasm

gapes; its bottom is imperceptible, but the counterscarp slopes not too

steeply to admit of a sliding descent if cautiously performed. The shady

bottom, dank and chilly, is thus gained, and reveals itself as a kind of

winding lane, wide enough for a waggon to pass along, floored with rank

herbage, and trending away, right and left, into obscurity, between the

concentric walls of earth. The towering closeness of these on each hand,

their impenetrability, and their ponderousness, are felt as a physical

pressure. The way is now up the second of them, which stands steeper and

higher than the first. To turn aside, as did Christian's companion, from

such a Hill Difficulty, is the more natural tendency; but the way to the

interior is upward. There is, of course, an entrance to the fortress;

but that lies far off on the other side. It might possibly have been the

wiser course to seek for easier ingress there.

However, being here, I ascend the second acclivity. The grass stems--the

grey beard of the hill--sway in a mass close to my stooping face. The

dead heads of these various grasses--fescues, fox-tails, and ryes--bob

and twitch as if pulled by a string underground. From a few thistles a

whistling proceeds; and even the moss speaks, in its humble way, under

the stress of the blast.

That the summit of the second line of defence has been gained is suddenly

made known by a contrasting wind from a new quarter, coming over with the

curve of a cascade. These novel gusts raise a sound from the whole camp

or castle, playing upon it bodily as upon a harp. It is with some

difficulty that a foothold can be preserved under their sweep. Looking

aloft for a moment I perceive that the sky is much more overcast than it

has been hitherto, and in a few instants a dead lull in what is now a

gale ensues with almost preternatural abruptness. I take advantage of

this to sidle down the second counterscarp, but by the time the ditch is

reached the lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm. It

begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary

strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand

here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the

scene is not so much light as vaporous phosphorescence.

The wind, quickening, abandons the natural direction it has pursued on

the open upland, and takes the course of the gorge's length, rushing

along therein helter-skelter, and carrying thick rain upon its back. The

rain is followed by hailstones which fly through the defile in

battalions--rolling, hopping, ricochetting, snapping, clattering down the

shelving banks in an undefinable haze of confusion. The earthen sides of

the fosse seem to quiver under the drenching onset, though it is

practically no more to them than the blows of Thor upon the giant of

Jotun-land. It is impossible to proceed further till the storm somewhat

abates, and I draw up behind a spur of the inner scarp, where possibly a

barricade stood two thousand years ago; and thus await events.

* * * * *

The roar of the storm can be heard travelling the complete circuit of the

castle--a measured mile--coming round at intervals like a

circumambulating column of infantry. Doubtless such a column has passed

this way in its time, but the only columns which enter in these latter

days are the columns of sheep and oxen that are sometimes seen here now;

while the only semblance of heroic voices heard are the utterances of

such, and of the many winds which make their passage through the ravines.

The expected lightning radiates round, and a rumbling as from its

subterranean vaults--if there are any--fills the castle. The lightning

repeats itself, and, coming after the aforesaid thoughts of martial men,

it bears a fanciful resemblance to swords moving in combat. It has the

very brassy hue of the ancient weapons that here were used. The so

sudden entry upon the scene of this metallic flame is as the entry of a

presiding exhibitor who unrolls the maps, uncurtains the pictures,

unlocks the cabinets, and effects a transformation by merely exposing the

materials of his science, unintelligibly cloaked till then. The abrupt

configuration of the bluffs and mounds is now for the first time clearly

revealed--mounds whereon, doubtless, spears and shields have frequently

lain while their owners loosened their sandals and yawned and stretched

their arms in the sun. For the first time, too, a glimpse is obtainable

of the true entrance used by its occupants of old, some way ahead.

There, where all passage has seemed to be inviolably barred by an almost

vertical facade, the ramparts are found to overlap each other like

loosely clasped fingers, between which a zigzag path may be followed--a

cunning construction that puzzles the uninformed eye. But its cunning,

even where not obscured by dilapidation, is now wasted on the solitary

forms of a few wild badgers, rabbits, and hares. Men must have often

gone out by those gates in the morning to battle with the Roman legions

under Vespasian; some to return no more, others to come back at evening,

bringing with them the noise of their heroic deeds. But not a page, not

a stone, has preserved their fame.

* * * * *

Acoustic perceptions multiply to-night. We can almost hear the stream of

years that have borne those deeds away from us. Strange articulations

seem to float on the air from that point, the gateway, where the

animation in past times must frequently have concentrated itself at hours

of coming and going, and general excitement. There arises an

ineradicable fancy that they are human voices; if so, they must be the

lingering air-borne vibrations of conversations uttered at least fifteen

hundred years ago. The attention is attracted from mere nebulous

imaginings about yonder spot by a real moving of something close at hand.

I recognize by the now moderate flashes of lightning, which are sheet-

like and nearly continuous, that it is the gradual elevation of a small

mound of earth. At first no larger than a man's fist it reaches the

dimensions of a hat, then sinks a little and is still. It is but the

heaving of a mole who chooses such weather as this to work in from some

instinct that there will be nobody abroad to molest him. As the fine

earth lifts and lifts and falls loosely aside fragments of burnt clay

roll out of it--clay that once formed part of cups or other vessels used

by the inhabitants of the fortress.

The violence of the storm has been counterbalanced by its transitoriness.

From being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud and hail shot with

lightning, I find myself uncovered of the humid investiture and left bare

to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles now on every wet grass-blade

and frond of moss.

But I am not yet inside the fort, and the delayed ascent of the third and

last escarpment is now made. It is steeper than either. The first was a

surface to walk up, the second to stagger up, the third can only be

ascended on the hands and toes. On the summit obtrudes the first

evidence which has been met with in these precincts that the time is

really the nineteenth century; it is in the form of a white notice-board

on a post, and the wording can just be discerned by the rays of the

setting moon:

CAUTION.--Any Person found removing Relics, Skeletons, Stones, Pottery,

Tiles, or other Material from this Earthwork, or cutting up the Ground,

will be Prosecuted as the Law directs.

Here one observes a difference underfoot from what has gone before:

scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in

meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the

spot. Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the

fort. So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau,

and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated

as one building. It is a long-violated retreat; all its corner-stones,

plinths, and architraves were carried away to build neighbouring villages

even before mediaeval or modern history began. Many a block which once

may have helped to form a bastion here rests now in broken and diminished

shape as part of the chimney-corner of some shepherd's cottage within the

distant horizon, and the corner-stones of this heathen altar may form the

base-course of some adjoining village church.

Yet the very bareness of these inner courts and wards, their condition of

mere pasturage, protects what remains of them as no defences could do.

Nothing is left visible that the hands can seize on or the weather

overturn, and a permanence of general outline at least results, which no

other condition could ensure.

The position of the castle on this isolated hill bespeaks deliberate and

strategic choice exercised by some remote mind capable of prospective

reasoning to a far extent. The natural configuration of the surrounding

country and its bearing upon such a stronghold were obviously long

considered and viewed mentally before its extensive design was carried

into execution. Who was the man that said, 'Let it be built here!'--not

on that hill yonder, or on that ridge behind, but on this best spot of

all? Whether he were some great one of the Belgae, or of the Durotriges,

or the travelling engineer of Britain's united tribes, must for ever

remain time's secret; his form cannot be realized, nor his countenance,

nor the tongue that he spoke, when he set down his foot with a thud and

said, 'Let it be here!'

Within the innermost enclosure, though it is so wide that at a

superficial glance the beholder has only a sense of standing on a breezy

down, the solitude is rendered yet more solitary by the knowledge that

between the benighted sojourner herein and all kindred humanity are those

three concentric walls of earth which no being would think of scaling on

such a night as this, even were he to hear the most pathetic cries

issuing hence that could be uttered by a spectre-chased soul. I reach a

central mound or platform--the crown and axis of the whole structure. The

view from here by day must be of almost limitless extent. On this raised

floor, dais, or rostrum, harps have probably twanged more or less tuneful

notes in celebration of daring, strength, or cruelty; of worship,

superstition, love, birth, and death; of simple loving-kindness perhaps

never. Many a time must the king or leader have directed his keen eyes

hence across the open lands towards the ancient road, the Icening Way,

still visible in the distance, on the watch for armed companies

approaching either to succour or to attack.

I am startled by a voice pronouncing my name. Past and present have

become so confusedly mingled under the associations of the spot that for

a time it has escaped my memory that this mound was the place agreed on

for the aforesaid appointment. I turn and behold my friend. He stands

with a dark lantern in his hand and a spade and light pickaxe over his

shoulder. He expresses both delight and surprise that I have come. I

tell him I had set out before the bad weather began.

He, to whom neither weather, darkness, nor difficulty seems to have any

relation or significance, so entirely is his soul wrapped up in his own

deep intentions, asks me to take the lantern and accompany him. I take

it and walk by his side. He is a man about sixty, small in figure, with

grey old-fashioned whiskers cut to the shape of a pair of crumb-brushes.

He is entirely in black broadcloth--or rather, at present, black and

brown, for he is bespattered with mud from his heels to the crown of his

low hat. He has no consciousness of this--no sense of anything but his

purpose, his ardour for which causes his eyes to shine like those of a

lynx, and gives his motions, all the elasticity of an athlete's.

'Nobody to interrupt us at this time of night!' he chuckles with fierce

enjoyment.

We retreat a little way and find a sort of angle, an elevation in the

sod, a suggested squareness amid the mass of irregularities around. Here,

he tells me, if anywhere, the king's house stood. Three months of

measurement and calculation have confirmed him in this conclusion.

He requests me now to open the lantern, which I do, and the light streams

out upon the wet sod. At last divining his proceedings I say that I had

no idea, in keeping the tryst, that he was going to do more at such an

unusual time than meet me for a meditative ramble through the stronghold.

I ask him why, having a practicable object, he should have minded

interruptions and not have chosen the day? He informs me, quietly

pointing to his spade, that it was because his purpose is to dig, then

signifying with a grim nod the gaunt notice-post against the sky beyond.

I inquire why, as a professed and well-known antiquary with capital

letters at the tail of his name, he did not obtain the necessary

authority, considering the stringent penalties for this sort of thing;

and he chuckles fiercely again with suppressed delight, and says,

'Because they wouldn't have given it!'

He at once begins cutting up the sod, and, as he takes the pickaxe to

follow on with, assures me that, penalty or no penalty, honest men or

marauders, he is sure of one thing, that we shall not be disturbed at our

work till after dawn.

I remember to have heard of men who, in their enthusiasm for some special

science, art, or hobby, have quite lost the moral sense which would

restrain them from indulging it illegitimately; and I conjecture that

here, at last, is an instance of such an one. He probably guesses the

way my thoughts travel, for he stands up and solemnly asserts that he has

a distinctly justifiable intention in this matter; namely, to uncover, to

search, to verify a theory or displace it, and to cover up again. He

means to take away nothing--not a grain of sand. In this he says he sees

no such monstrous sin. I inquire if this is really a promise to me? He

repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging. My contribution to

the labour is that of directing the light constantly upon the hole. When

he has reached something more than a foot deep he digs more cautiously,

saying that, be it much or little there, it will not lie far below the

surface; such things never are deep. A few minutes later the point of

the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance. He draws the implement out as

feelingly as if it had entered a man's body. Taking up the spade he

shovels with care, and a surface, level as an altar, is presently

disclosed. His eyes flash anew; he pulls handfuls of grass and mops the

surface clean, finally rubbing it with his handkerchief. Grasping the

lantern from my hand he holds it close to the ground, when the rays

reveal a complete mosaic--a pavement of minute tesserae of many colours,

of intricate pattern, a work of much art, of much time, and of much

industry. He exclaims in a shout that he knew it always--that it is not

a Celtic stronghold exclusively, but also a Roman; the former people

having probably contributed little more than the original framework which

the latter took and adapted till it became the present imposing

structure.

I ask, What if it is Roman?

A great deal, according to him. That it proves all the world to be wrong

in this great argument, and himself alone to be right! Can I wait while

he digs further?

I agree--reluctantly; but he does not notice my reluctance. At an

adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a

navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name. Sometimes he

falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and

where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets

plastered with the damp earth. He continually murmurs to himself how

important, how very important, this discovery is! He draws out an

object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet

grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent

beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from the

digger. Further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon. It

is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern

accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world. Finally a

skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect. He lays it out on the grass, bone

to its bone.

My friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no

place of burial. He turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from

a corner he draws out a heavy lump--a small image four or five inches

high. We clean it as before. It is a statuette, apparently of gold, or,

more probably, of bronze-gilt--a figure of Mercury, obviously, its head

being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of

that deity. Further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good

finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in

every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer.

We seem to be standing in the Roman Forum and not on a hill in Wessex.

Intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even

this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on

in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the

storm. Looking up I perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has

again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge of

the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon. I turn my back to the

tempest, still directing the light across the hole. My companion digs on

unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things

of the moment as dreams. But at last he is fairly beaten, and standing

up beside me looks round on what he has done. The rays of the lantern

pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on the

other side. The beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth, and

the forehead, cheek-bones, and two-and-thirty teeth of the skull glisten

in the candle-shine as they lie.

This storm, like the first, is of the nature of a squall, and it ends as

abruptly as the other. We dig no further. My friend says that it is

enough--he has proved his point. He turns to replace the bones in the

trench and covers them. But they fall to pieces under his touch: the air

has disintegrated them, and he can only sweep in the fragments. The next

act of his plan is more than difficult, but is carried out. The

treasures are inhumed again in their respective holes: they are not ours.

Each deposition seems to cost him a twinge; and at one moment I fancied I

saw him slip his hand into his coat pocket.

'We must re-bury them all,' say I.

'O yes,' he answers with integrity. 'I was wiping my hand.'

The beauties of the tesselated floor of the governor's house are once

again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid

smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same

handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we

make for the eastern gate of the fortress.

Dawn bursts upon us suddenly as we reach the opening. It comes by the

lifting and thinning of the clouds that way till we are bathed in a pink

light. The direction of his homeward journey is not the same as mine,

and we part under the outer slope.

Walking along quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend,

and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the

gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures? He

seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the fact. Probably,

however, he was as good as his word.

* * *

It was thus I spoke to myself, and so the adventure ended. But one thing

remains to be told, and that is concerned with seven years after. Among

the effects of my friend, at that time just deceased, was found,

carefully preserved, a gilt statuette representing Mercury, labelled

'Debased Roman.' No record was attached to explain how it came into his

possession. The figure was bequeathed to the Casterbridge Museum.

Detroit Post,

March 1885.

WHAT THE SHEPHERD SAW: A TALE OF FOUR MOONLIGHT NIGHTS

The genial Justice of the Peace--now, alas, no more--who made himself

responsible for the facts of this story, used to begin in the good old-

fashioned way with a bright moonlight night and a mysterious figure, an

excellent stroke for an opening, even to this day, if well followed up.

The Christmas moon (he would say) was showing her cold face to the

upland, the upland reflecting the radiance in frost-sparkles so minute as

only to be discernible by an eye near at hand. This eye, he said, was

the eye of a shepherd lad, young for his occupation, who stood within a

wheeled hut of the kind commonly in use among sheep-keepers during the

early lambing season, and was abstractedly looking through the loophole

at the scene without.

The spot was called Lambing Corner, and it was a sheltered portion of

that wide expanse of rough pastureland known as the Marlbury Downs, which

you directly traverse when following the turnpike-road across Mid-Wessex

from London, through Aldbrickham, in the direction of Bath and Bristol.

Here, where the hut stood, the land was high and dry, open, except to the

north, and commanding an undulating view for miles. On the north side

grew a tall belt of coarse furze, with enormous stalks, a clump of the

same standing detached in front of the general mass. The clump was

hollow, and the interior had been ingeniously taken advantage of as a

position for the before-mentioned hut, which was thus completely screened

from winds, and almost invisible, except through the narrow approach. But

the furze twigs had been cut away from the two little windows of the hut,

that the occupier might keep his eye on his sheep.

In the rear, the shelter afforded by the belt of furze bushes was

artificially improved by an inclosure of upright stakes, interwoven with

boughs of the same prickly vegetation, and within the inclosure lay a

renowned Marlbury-Down breeding flock of eight hundred ewes.

To the south, in the direction of the young shepherd's idle gaze, there

rose one conspicuous object above the uniform moonlit plateau, and only

one. It was a Druidical trilithon, consisting of three oblong stones in

the form of a doorway, two on end, and one across as a lintel. Each

stone had been worn, scratched, washed, nibbled, split, and otherwise

attacked by ten thousand different weathers; but now the blocks looked

shapely and little the worse for wear, so beautifully were they silvered

over by the light of the moon. The ruin was locally called the Devil's

Door.

An old shepherd presently entered the hut from the direction of the ewes,

and looked around in the gloom. 'Be ye sleepy?' he asked in cross

accents of the boy.

The lad replied rather timidly in the negative.

'Then,' said the shepherd, 'I'll get me home-along, and rest for a few

hours. There's nothing to be done here now as I can see. The ewes can

want no more tending till daybreak--'tis beyond the bounds of reason that

they can. But as the order is that one of us must bide, I'll leave 'ee,

d'ye hear. You can sleep by day, and I can't. And you can be down to my

house in ten minutes if anything should happen. I can't afford 'ee

candle; but, as 'tis Christmas week, and the time that folks have

hollerdays, you can enjoy yerself by falling asleep a bit in the chair

instead of biding awake all the time. But mind, not longer at once than

while the shade of the Devil's Door moves a couple of spans, for you must

keep an eye upon the ewes.'

The boy made no definite reply, and the old man, stirring the fire in the

stove with his crook-stem, closed the door upon his companion and

vanished.