egrees his
situation cleared to him, and he beheld it in all the ghastliness
of a right mind. She knew the worst of him--the very worst. How
could he face her now? She would soon be coming down to see about
breakfast, as she had said, and there would he be in all his shame
confronting her. He could not bear the thought, and softly drawing
on his boots, and taking his hat from the nail on which she had hung
it, he slipped noiselessly out of the house.

His fixed idea was to get away to some obscure spot and hide, and
perhaps pray; and the only spot which occurred to him was Marygreen.
He called at his lodging in Christminster, where he found awaiting
him a note of dismissal from his employer; and having packed up he
turned his back upon the city that had been such a thorn in his
side, and struck southward into Wessex. He had no money left in
his pocket, his small savings, deposited at one of the banks in
Christminster, having fortunately been left untouched. To get to
Marygreen, therefore, his only course was walking; and the distance
being nearly twenty miles, he had ample time to complete on the way
the sobering process begun in him.

At some hour of the evening he reached Alfredston. Here he pawned
his waistcoat, and having gone out of the town a mile or two, slept
under a rick that night. At dawn he rose, shook off the hayseeds and
stems from his clothes, and started again, breasting the long white
road up the hill to the downs, which had been visible to him a long
way off, and passing the milestone at the top, whereon he had carved
his hopes years ago.

He reached the ancient hamlet while the people were at breakfast.
Weary and mud-bespattered, but quite possessed of his ordinary
clearness of brain, he sat down by the well, thinking as he did so
what a poor Christ he made. Seeing a trough of water near he bathed
his face, and went on to the cottage of his great-aunt, whom he found
breakfasting in bed, attended by the woman who lived with her.

"What--out o' work?" asked his relative, regarding him through eyes
sunken deep, under lids heavy as pot-covers, no other cause for his
tumbled appearance suggesting itself to one whose whole life had been
a struggle with material things.

"Yes," said Jude heavily. "I think I must have a little rest."

Refreshed by some breakfast, he went up to his old room and lay down
in his shirt-sleeves, after the manner of the artizan. He fell
asleep for a short while,