n to breathe
the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-land towards
Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the cultivated valleys.

She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two
hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing it in
half. Over the railing she saw the low green country; over the green
trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat facade, denoting
the entrance to the county jail. On the roof of this front specks were
moving about; they seemed to be workmen erecting something. Her flesh
crept. She descended slowly, and was soon amid corn-fields and pastures.
In another half-hour, when it was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White
Hart, the first inn of the town on that side.

Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on
horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs. Lodge
was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her some
harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair' next day.
Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in Casterbridge market, so
that she was unknown. While dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys
standing at the door of a harness-maker's shop just above the inn,
looking inside it with deep interest.

'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.

'Making the rope for to-morrow.'

She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.

''Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued. 'I could get you
a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'

She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious
creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming
interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat
down to think.

Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means of
obtaining access to the prison. The words of the cunning-man returned to
her mind. He had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired though
it was, as a pass-key. In her inexperience she knew little about jail
functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-sheriff; but
dimly only. She knew, however, that there must be a hangman, and to the
hangman she determined to apply.

CHAPTER VIII--A WATER-SIDE HERMIT

At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost
every jail. Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the Casterbridge official
dwelt in a lonely cottage by