der, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer
pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they
fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of
snow, shaken from the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged birds,
and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted
clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain,
all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle
mercifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices
and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told,
from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had
sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,
leaving them still locked in each other's arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they
found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It
bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:

+

BENEATH THIS TREE

LIES THE BODY

OF

JOHN OAKHURST,

WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK

ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,

AND

HANDED IN HIS CHECKS

ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

+

And pulseless and cold, with a derringer by his side and a bullet in
his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who
was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker
Flat.

THE THREE STRANGERS[1]

[Footnote 1: From _Wessex Tales_.]

_Thomas Hardy_ (1840)

Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be
reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases,
as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation
is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage
of some shepherd.

Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however,
the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from
a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular
upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets