from her
presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a
score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. They roamed at
large on the undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detract
much from the solitude.
The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction
was afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of her
skirt, and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off and
hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood
passively still. When she began to extricate herself it was by
turning round and round, and so unwinding the prickly switch. She was
in a desponding reverie.
Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had
drawn the attention of the men on Rainbarrow and of Wildeve in the
valley below. A faint illumination from its rays began to glow upon
her face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on the
level ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at the
junction of two converging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dry
except immediately under the fire, where there was a large pool,
bearded all round by heather and rushes. In the smooth water of the
pool the fire appeared upside down.
The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed
by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top,
like impaled heads above a city wall. A white mast, fitted up with
spars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the
dark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it.
Altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon
which had been kindled a beacon fire.
Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above
the bank from behind, and vanished again. This was a small human
hand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire; but for all
that could be seen the hand, like that which troubled Belshazzar, was
there alone. Occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped
with a hiss into the pool.
At one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled any one
who wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. Within
was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of
having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept
in, and were reasserting their old supremacy. Further ahead were
dimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings,
b
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