to the love-story of my sister
and Charles. She lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive
it; while I--but never mind me.

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 except