: the whole procession was not unlike
Flaxman's group of the suitors tottering on towards the infernal
regions under the conduct of Mercury. The gnarled shapes passed
into the village, Troy, their leader, entering the farmhouse. Not a
single one of them had turned his face to the ricks, or apparently
bestowed one thought upon their condition.

Soon Oak too went homeward, by a different route from theirs. In
front of him against the wet glazed surface of the lane he saw a
person walking yet more slowly than himself under an umbrella. The
man turned and plainly started; he was Boldwood.

"How are you this morning, sir?" said Oak.

"Yes, it is a wet day.--Oh, I am well, very well, I thank you; quite
well."

"I am glad to hear it, sir."

Boldwood seemed to awake to the present by degrees. "You look tired
and ill, Oak," he said then, desultorily regarding his companion.

"I am tired. You look strangely altered, sir."

"I? Not a bit of it: I am well enough. What put that into your
head?"

"I thought you didn't look quite so topping as you used to, that was
all."

"Indeed, then you are mistaken," said Boldwood, shortly. "Nothing
hurts me. My constitution is an iron one."

"I've been working hard to get our ricks covered, and was barely in
time. Never had such a struggle in my life.... Yours of course are
safe, sir."

"Oh yes," Boldwood added, after an interval of silence: "What did you
ask, Oak?"

"Your ricks are all covered before this time?"

"No."

"At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?"

"They are not."

"Them under the hedge?"

"No. I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it."

"Nor the little one by the stile?"

"Nor the little one by the stile. I overlooked the ricks this year."

"Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir."

"Possibly not."

"Overlooked them," repeated Gabriel slowly to himself. It is
difficult to describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement
had upon Oak at such a moment. All the night he had been feeling
that the neglect he was labouring to repair was abnormal and
isolated--the only instance of the kind within the circuit of the
county. Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater
waste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A few
months earlier Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as
preposterous an idea as a sailor forgetting he was in a ship. Oak
was just thinking th