sing still, an
immense landscape stretched around them on every side; behind, the
green valley of her birth, before, a gray country of which she knew
nothing except from her first brief visit to Trantridge. Thus they
reached the verge of an incline down which the road stretched in a
long straight descent of nearly a mile.

Ever since the accident with her father's horse Tess Durbeyfield,
courageous as she naturally was, had been exceedingly timid on
wheels; the least irregularity of motion startled her. She began to
get uneasy at a certain recklessness in her conductor's driving.

"You will go down slow, sir, I suppose?" she said with attempted
unconcern.

D'Urberville looked round upon her, nipped his cigar with the tips of
his large white centre-teeth, and allowed his lips to smile slowly of
themselves.

"Why, Tess," he answered, after another whiff or two, "it isn't a
brave bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at
full gallop. There's nothing like it for raising your spirits."

"But perhaps you need not now?"

"Ah," he said, shaking his head, "there are two to be reckoned with.
It is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very
queer temper."

"Who?"

"Why, this mare. I fancy she looked round at me in a very grim way
just then. Didn't you notice it?"

"Don't try to frighten me, sir," said Tess stiffly.

"Well, I don't. If any living man can manage this horse I can: I
won't say any living man can do it--but if such has the power, I am
he."

"Why do you have such a horse?"

"Ah, well may you ask it! It was my fate, I suppose. Tib has killed
one chap; and just after I bought her she nearly killed me. And
then, take my word for it, I nearly killed her. But she's touchy
still, very touchy; and one's life is hardly safe behind her
sometimes."

They were just beginning to descend; and it was evident that the
horse, whether of her own will or of his (the latter being the more
likely), knew so well the reckless performance expected of her that
she hardly required a hint from behind.

Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dog-cart
rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set
in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising
and falling in undulations before them. Sometimes a wheel was off
the ground, it seemed, for many yards; sometimes a stone was sent
spinning over the hedge, and flinty sparks from