ght them up.

Yeobright walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all would
soon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume was
wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale the
familiar scent. It was the place at which, four hours earlier,
his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered with
shepherd's-thyme. While he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan
suddenly reached his ears.

He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there save
the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in an unbroken line.
He moved a few steps in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent
figure almost close to his feet.

Among the different possibilities as to the person's individuality there
did not for a moment occur to Yeobright that it might be one of his own
family. Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of doors at
these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again; but
Clym remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form was
feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave. But he
was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he stooped
and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.

His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguish
which would have escaped him died upon his lips. During the momentary
interval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must be
done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and
his mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on this
heath at hours similar to the present. Then he awoke to activity; and
bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breath
though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp.

"O, what is it! Mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?" he cried,
pressing his lips to her face. "I am your Clym. How did you come here?
What does it all mean?"

At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for Eustacia had
caused was not remembered by Yeobright, and to him the present joined
continuously with that friendly past that had been their experience
before the division.

She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and then
Clym strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessary
to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. He was
able-bodied, and his mother w