rassment as to what
she could say to him if she were to leave off, had its unrecognized share
in keeping her going. The child, who was beginning to be distressed by
the strange situation, came up and said: 'Stop, mother, stop, and let's
go home!' as she seized Car'line's hand.

Suddenly Car'line sank staggering to the floor; and rolling over on her
face, prone she remained. Mop's fiddle thereupon emitted an elfin shriek
of finality; stepping quickly down from the nine-gallon beer-cask which
had formed his rostrum, he went to the little girl, who disconsolately
bent over her mother.

The guests who had gone into the back-room for liquor and change of air,
hearing something unusual, trooped back hitherward, where they
endeavoured to revive poor, weak Car'line by blowing her with the bellows
and opening the window. Ned, her husband, who had been detained in
Casterbridge, as aforesaid, came along the road at this juncture, and
hearing excited voices through the open casement, and to his great
surprise, the mention of his wife's name, he entered amid the rest upon
the scene. Car'line was now in convulsions, weeping violently, and for a
long time nothing could be done with her. While he was sending for a
cart to take her onward to Stickleford Hipcroft anxiously inquired how it
had all happened; and then the assembly explained that a fiddler formerly
known in the locality had lately revisited his old haunts, and had taken
upon himself without invitation to play that evening at the inn.

Ned demanded the fiddler's name, and they said Ollamoor.

'Ah!' exclaimed Ned, looking round him. 'Where is he, and where--where's
my little girl?'

Ollamoor had disappeared, and so had the child. Hipcroft was in ordinary
a quiet and tractable fellow, but a determination which was to be feared
settled in his face now. 'Blast him!' he cried. 'I'll beat his skull in
for'n, if I swing for it to-morrow!'

He had rushed to the poker which lay on the hearth, and hastened down the
passage, the people following. Outside the house, on the other side of
the highway, a mass of dark heath-land rose sullenly upward to its not
easily accessible interior, a ravined plateau, whereon jutted into the
sky, at the distance of a couple of miles, the fir-woods of Mistover
backed by the Yalbury coppices--a place of Dantesque gloom at this hour,
which would have afforded secure hiding for a battery of artillery, much
less a man and a child.

Some oth