ase when they were comedies, there was
no frivolous treatment to reproach him for when they chanced to end
tragically.

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon
which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic
intensity. Had she known Boldwood's moods, her blame would have
been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover,
had she known her present power for good or evil over this man, she
would have trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present,
unluckily for her future tranquillity, her understanding had not yet
told her what Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it was
possible to form guesses concerning his wild capabilities from old
floodmarks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides
which caused them.

Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked forth across the
level fields. Beyond the first enclosure was a hedge, and on the
other side of this a meadow belonging to Bathsheba's farm.

It was now early spring--the time of going to grass with the sheep,
when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these are laid
up for mowing. The wind, which had been blowing east for several
weeks, had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring had come
abruptly--almost without a beginning. It was that period in the
vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the
season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to
rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless
plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the
bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united
thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the
powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy
efforts.

Boldwood, looking into the distant meadows, saw there three figures.
They were those of Miss Everdene, Shepherd Oak, and Cainy Ball.

When Bathsheba's figure shone upon the farmer's eyes it lighted him
up as the moon lights up a great tower. A man's body is as the
shell, or the tablet, of his soul, as he is reserved or ingenuous,
overflowing or self-contained. There was a change in Boldwood's
exterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he
was now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a
fearful sense of exposure. It is the usual experience of strong
natures when they love.

At last