oically, "I won't sell his old body. When we
d'Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn't sell our chargers
for cat's meat. Let 'em keep their shillings! He've served me well
in his lifetime, and I won't part from him now."

He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the
garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.
When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round
the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children
following in funeral train. Abraham and 'Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and
Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the
walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave.
The bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would they do?

"Is he gone to heaven?" asked Abraham, between the sobs.

Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried
anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she
regarded herself in the light of a murderess.

V

The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became
disorganized forthwith. Distress, if not penury, loomed in the
distance. Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted
fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could
not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and,
having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer,
he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.

Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this
quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out
of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.

"We must take the ups wi' the downs, Tess," said she; "and never
could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for
moment. You must try your friends. Do ye know that there is a very
rich Mrs d'Urberville living on the outskirts o' The Chase, who must
be our relation? You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some
help in our trouble."

"I shouldn't care to do that," says Tess. "If there is such a lady,
'twould be enough for us if she were friendly--not to expect her to
give us help."

"You could win her round to do anything, my dear. Besides, perhaps
there's more in it than you know of. I've heard what I've heard,
good-now."

The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more
deferential than she might otherwise have been to the materna