coppery cloud, bounding a green and pellucid expanse in the western
sky. Amaranthine glosses came over them then, and the unresting
world wheeled her round to a contrasting prospect eastward, in the
shape of indecisive and palpitating stars. She gazed upon their
silent throes amid the shades of space, but realised none at all.
Her troubled spirit was far away with Troy.

CHAPTER XXXII

NIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING

The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst,
and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead. The church
clock struck eleven. The air was so empty of other sounds that the
whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct,
and so was also the click of the same at their close. The notes flew
forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things--flapping
and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds,
spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.

Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by
Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba
had set out to visit. A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann
turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed. She was totally
unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep. It led
to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation
that something had happened. She left her bed and looked out of the
window. The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the
paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure
approaching the horse that was feeding there. The figure seized the
horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field. Here
she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle,
for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the
trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light
wheels.

Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with
the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure. They were a woman and
a gipsy man. A woman was out of the question in such an occupation
at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might
probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular
night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt.
Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies
in Weatherbury Bottom.

Mary