t, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms,
and the polished shears they flourished, causing these to bristle
with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath
them a captive sheep lay panting, quickening its pants as misgiving
merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside.

This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did
not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which
is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities,
Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's THEN is the rustic's
NOW. In London, twenty or thirty-years ago are old times; in Paris
ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were
included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a
mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a
gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair.
Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In
these Wessex nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old;
his old times are still new; his present is futurity.

So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in
harmony with the barn.

The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave
and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep
being all collected in a crowd within these two enclosures; and in
one angle a catching-pen was formed, in which three or four sheep
were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss
of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three
women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering
up the fleeces and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying
them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old
maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had
passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads.

Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men to see that
there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the
animals were shorn close. Gabriel, who flitted and hovered under her
bright eyes like a moth, did not shear continuously, half his time
being spent in attending to the others and selecting the sheep for
them. At the present moment he was engaged in handing round a mug of
mild liquor, supplied from a barrel in the corner, and cut pieces of
bread and cheese.

Bathsheba, after t