and vanity, Paris, I believe."

BOOK SECOND
THE ARRIVAL

I

Tidings of the Comer

On fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain ephemeral
operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, the majestic
calm of Egdon Heath. They were activities which, beside those of a
town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the ferment of
stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of somnolence. But here,
away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere
walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imagine
himself to be Adam without the least difficulty, they attracted the
attention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep,
and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at a
safe distance.

The performance was that of bringing together and building into a
stack the furze-faggots which Humphrey had been cutting for the
captain's use during the foregoing fine days. The stack was at the
end of the dwelling, and the men engaged in building it were Humphrey
and Sam, the old man looking on.

It was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter
solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused
the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here
to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience
of the sky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise
had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had
receded from north-west to south-west; but Egdon had hardly heeded the
change.

Eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like a
kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimney-corner. The air was
still, and while she lingered a moment here alone sounds of voices in
conversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. She entered
the recess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with
its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way
to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck
down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as
seaweed drapes a rocky fissure.

She remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the chimney, and the
voices were those of the workers.

Her grandfather joined in the conversation. "That lad ought never to
have left home. His father's occupation would have suited him best,
and the boy should have followed o