burst. Joseph Poorgrass retired a few steps behind
a hurdle.

"He says he shall not come onless you request en to come civilly and
in a proper manner, as becomes any 'ooman begging a favour."

"Oh, oh, that's his answer! Where does he get his airs? Who am I,
then, to be treated like that? Shall I beg to a man who has begged
to me?"

Another of the flock sprang into the air, and fell dead.

The men looked grave, as if they suppressed opinion.

Bathsheba turned aside, her eyes full of tears. The strait she was
in through pride and shrewishness could not be disguised longer: she
burst out crying bitterly; they all saw it; and she attempted no
further concealment.

"I wouldn't cry about it, miss," said William Smallbury,
compassionately. "Why not ask him softer like? I'm sure he'd come
then. Gable is a true man in that way."

Bathsheba checked her grief and wiped her eyes. "Oh, it is a wicked
cruelty to me--it is--it is!" she murmured. "And he drives me to do
what I wouldn't; yes, he does!--Tall, come indoors."

After this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an
establishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels. Here she
sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive
sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell
follows a storm. The note was none the less polite for being written
in a hurry. She held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then
added these words at the bottom:--

"DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!"

She looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips,
as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in
examining whether such strategy were justifiable. The note was
despatched as the message had been, and Bathsheba waited indoors
for the result.

It was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the
messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again
outside. She could not watch this time, but, leaning over the old
bureau at which she had written the letter, closed her eyes, as if
to keep out both hope and fear.

The case, however, was a promising one. Gabriel was not angry: he
was simply neutral, although her first command had been so haughty.
Such imperiousness would have damned a little less beauty; and
on the other hand, such beauty would have redeemed a little less
imperiousness.

She went out when the horse was heard, and looked up. A mounted
figure passed betwe