Muse

Good evening. Thank you so much for being here. The Sleepy Bookshelf wouldn't be possible without your support. Help us keep the show going and enjoy all of our episodes ad-free by joining our premium feed. You'll also get exclusive bonus content. There's a link in the show notes if you'd like to learn more. Hello, it's Elizabeth, and I'm excited to share with you the newest show from Slumber Studios. It's called Sleepy History, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Intriguing stories, people, mysteries and events from history, delivered in a supremely calming atmosphere. explore the legend of El Dorado see what life was like for the Roman gladiators uncover the myths and mysteries of Stonehenge you'll find interesting but relaxing episodes like these on Sleepy History and the same great production quality you've come to know and love from The Sleepy Bookshelf So check it out, and perhaps you'll have another way to get a good night's rest. Just search Sleepy History in your preferred podcast player. Good evening, and welcome to The Sleepy Bookshelf, where we put down our worries from the day and pick up a good book. I'm your host, Elizabeth. And it is wonderful to be here with you tonight. This evening will be continuing with Far From The Madding Crowd. But first, get comfortable and close your eyes. Imagine yourself floating on a calm river beneath a dark, star-filled sky. The water carries you effortlessly Needing nothing from you at all Each thought that appears in your mind Drifts past like a lantern on the surface growing smaller as it moves further away. Above you the stars remain steady and silent keeping watch through the night. You simply float onward as you are carried gently towards sleep.

Gabriel Og continued to think about Bathsheba Everdeen and looked for opportunities to see her again. One morning he found and went to return her lost hat, to see her riding unconventionally through the woods, lying flat on the horse's back to avoid low branches, then sitting up and continuing to ride astride the horse as opposed to the traditional side saddle. When he revealed that he had seen her, she was embarrassed and avoided him for several days, but later she discovered him unconscious in his shepherd's hut after he had accidentally closed the ventilation openings on a cold night. She rescued him, revived him, and the two shared a playful conversation that deepened Gabriel's affection for her. Convinced that he loved her, Gabriel decided to propose marriage. He visited her aunt's cottage and declared his intentions, only to be mistakenly told that she already had many admirers. Bathsheba quickly corrected the misunderstanding, but when Gabriel proposed, she gently refused. Although she enjoyed the attention and admitted marriage sounded appealing, she did not love him and valued her independence too highly to accept. Heartbroken, but respectful, Gabriel returned to his farm. And that is where we pick up tonight. So just lie back and relax as I turn to the next pages of Far From the Madding Crowd. Chapter 5 Departure of Bathsheba A Pastoral Tragedy The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdeen had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation, the less absolute its character. It may have been observed that there is no regular perth for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a shortcut that way,

but it has been known to fail. Separation, which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt to idealise the removed object with others, notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity and felt the secret fusion of himself in Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone. That was all. His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit. and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity, whether as a visitor or permanently, he could not discover. Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony-tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh, and a coat marked in random splotches, approximating in colour to white and slaty grey. But the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them a reddish-brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. in substance it had originally been hair but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple this dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper and the result was that George knew the exact degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as come in and damn you, come in that he knew to a hair's breadth

the rate of trotting back from the used tails that each call involved if a staggerer with the sheep crook was to be escaped though old, he was clever and trustworthy still the young dog, George's son might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at the flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments yet, still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. So earnest and yet so wrong-headed was this young dog, he had no name in particular, and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection, that if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he could do it. he would have chased them across the whole country with the greatest pleasure, if not called off or reminded when to stop by the example of old George. Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcombe Hill was a chalk pit, from which chalk had been drawn for generations and spread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing. One night, when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the outhouse till the next morning. Only one responded. Old George. The other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill eating a dead lamb, the kind of meat he usually kept from them, except when other food ran short, and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal he went indoors to the luxury of a bed which latterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays. It was a still, moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music.

To the shepherd, the note of the sheep bell like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awaking morn, that note was heard by Gabriel, beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways. By the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell, as when the flock breaks into new pasture, which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run, when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of Oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity. He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through the foggy dawn and ascended the hill. The forward ewes were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their lambs enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest, forming the bulk of the flock were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call. Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge. A gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy in the wintertime, of which a deal grew in the plantation. He followed through the hedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again. The valleys and the farthest hills resounded, as when the sailors invoked the lost Hylus on the Mytian shore, but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill, on the extreme summit where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk pit. He saw the younger dog, standing

against the sky, dark and motionless as Napoleon at St Helena. A horrible conviction. direction darted through Oak. With a sensation of bodily faintness, he advanced. At one point, the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprint of his ewes. The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs of implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The ewes lay dead and dying at its foot. A heap of 200, representing in their condition just now at least 200 more. oak was an intensely humane man indeed his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of which bordered on strategy and carried him on as by gravitation a shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in mutton that a day came and found every shepherd an arrant traitor to his defenceless sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs. It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been disappeared at a blow. His hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low, possibly forever. Gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life, between eighteen and eight and twenty to reach his present stage of progress that no more seemed to be left in him. He leant down upon a rail and covered his face with his hands. Stupors, however, do not last forever, and Farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness. Thank God I am not married. What would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me? Oak raised his head, and wondering what he could do, listlessly surveyed the scene.

By the outer margin of the pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome-yellow moon which had only a few days to last. The morning star dogging her on the left hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye. And as the world awoke, a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered. As far as could be learnt it appeared that the poor young dog, still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better, had at the ends of his meal of the dead lamb which may have given him additional energy and spirits collected all the ewes into a corner driven the timid creatures through the hedge crossed the upper field and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing and so hurled them over the edge. George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live. Another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. Gabriel's farm had been stalked by a dealer on the strength of Oak's promising look and character who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such a time as the advance could be cleared off. Oak found that the value of stock, plant, and implements, which were really his own, would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man, with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more. Chapter 6 The fair, the journey, the fire Two months passed away We are brought on to a day in February On which was held the yearly statute or hiring fair In the county town of Casterbridge

At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers, waiting upon chance, all men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these, carters and wagoners were distinguished by having a piece of whipcord twisted round their hats. Thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw. Shepherds held their sheep crooks in their hands, and thus the situation required was known to the hirers at a glance. In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior appearance to the rest. In fact, his superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly as to a farmer and to use sir as a finishing word. His answer always was, I'm looking for a place myself, a bailiff's. Do you know of anybody who wants one. Gabriel was paler now. His eyes were more meditative and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime pits of Siddim. But there was left to him a dignified calm he had never known before, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation and the loss gain. In the morning, a regiment of cavalry had left the town, and a sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four streets. As the end of the day drew on and he found himself not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined them and gone off to serve his country. Weary of standing in the marketplace and not much minding the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer himself in some other capacity than a bailiff. All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. Sheep-tending was Gabriel's specialty.

Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscure lane, he went up to a smith's shop. How long would it take you to make me a shepherd's crook? Twenty minutes. How much? Two shillings. He sat on a bench, and the crook was made, a stem being given him into the bargain. Then he went to a ready-made clothes shop, the owner of which had a large rural connection. As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's money, he attempted, and carried out an exchange of his overcoat for a shepherd's regulation. smock-frock. This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the centre of the town and stood on the kerb of the pavement as a shepherd, crook in hand. Now that Oak had turned himself into a shepherd, it seemed that bailiffs were most in demand. However, two or three farmers noticed him and drew near Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoined form Where did you come from? Norcombe. That's a long way away. Fifteen miles. Whose farm were you upon last? My own. This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. Finally, Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never made advance beyond this point. It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporise a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it. Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his colours as a shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the whole cycle of labour that was required at the fair. It grew dusk. Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn exchange. Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-frock pocket Touched his flute, which he carried there Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly-bought wisdom into practice He drew out his flute and began to play jockey to the fair In the style of a man who had never known a moment's sorrow oak could pipe with arcadian sweetness

and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers he played on with spirit and in half an hour had earned in pence what was a small fortune to a destitute man by making inquiries he learnt that there was another fair at Shotsford the next day How far is Shotsford? Ten miles, to the side of Weatherby Weatherby? It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before This information was like coming from night into noon How far is it to Weatherby? Five or six miles Bathsheba had probably left Weatherby long before this time but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shotsford's Fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the Weatherbury quarter. Moreover, the Weatherbury folk were by no means uninteresting intrinsically. If reports spoke truly, they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole country. Oak resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shotsford and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended as the direct route into the village in question The road stretched through water meadows traversed by little brooks whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres and folded into creases at the sides or where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth which rode on in undisturbed serenity. On higher levels, the dead and dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along, helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind and little birds in the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving, but flying away if he stopped to look at them. He passed by Yolbury Wood, where the game birds were rising to their roosts and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants and the wheezy whistle of the hens. By the time he had walked three or four miles, every shape in the landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness.

He descended Yalbury Hill and could just discern ahead of him a wagon, drawn up under a great overhanging tree by the roadside. On coming close, he found there were no horses attached to it The spot being apparently quite deserted The wagon, from its position, seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom, it was quite empty. Gabriel sat down on the shafts of the vehicle and considered his position. He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey, and having been on foot since daybreak, he felt tempted to lie down upon the hay in the wagon, instead of pushing on to the village of Weatherbury and having to pay for a lodging. eating his last slices of bread and ham and drinking from the bottle of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him he got into the lonely wagon here he spread half of the hay as a bed and as well as he could in the darkness pulled the other half over him by way of bed clothes covering himself entirely and feeling physically as comfortable as ever he had been in his life. Inward melancholy, it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish, quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history. So thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral, He fell asleep, shepherds enjoying, in common with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the god instead of having to wait for him. On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep whose length he had no idea, Oak found that the wagon was in motion. He was being carried along the road at a rate rather considerable for a vehicle without springs, and under the circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the wagon like a kettle drumstick. He then distinguished voices in conversation coming from the forepart of the wagon. His concern at this dilemma, which would have been alarm had he been a thriving man, but misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror, led him to peer,

cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars above him. Charles' wane was getting towards a right angle with the pole star, and Gabriel concluded it must be about nine o'clock, in other words, that he had slept two hours. This small, astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover, if possible, into whose hands he was fallen. Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs outside the wagon, one of whom was driving. Gabriel soon found that this was the wagoner and it appeared they had come from Casterbridge Fair like himself. A conversation was in progress which continued thus. Well, be as twill, she's a fine handsome body as far as looks be concerned. But that's only the skin of the woman. These dandy cats will be as proud as Lucifer in their inside. Aye, so I do seem, Billy Smallbury. So I do seem. The utterance was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance, the jolting of the wagon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx. It came from the man who held the reins. She's a very vain female, so tis said here and there. Ah, no. If so beat is like that, I can't look her in the face. Lord, no, not I. Such a shy man as I be. yes she's very vain tis said that every night at going to bed she looks in the glass to put on her nightcap properly and not a married woman oh the world and can play the piano so tis said can play so clever that can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for dear tell art a happy time for us and i feel quite new man and how do she pay that i don't know master poor grass On hearing these, and other similar remarks, a wild thought flashed into Gabriel's mind that they might be speaking of Bathsheba. There were, however, no grounds for attaining such a supposition, for the wagon, though going in the direction of Weatherbury, might be going beyond it, and the woman alluded to seemed to be the mistress of some estate.

They were now apparently close upon Weatherbury, and, not to alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the wagon unseen. He turned to an opening in the hedge which he found to be a gate, and mounting thereon, he sat, meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or cornstack. The crunching jangle of the wagon died upon his ear. He was about to walk on when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light, appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow increased. Something was on fire. Gabriel again mounted the gate, and leaping down on the other side upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to a great distinctness. A rickyard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be painted over with a rich, orange glow, and the whole front of his smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of thorn-twigs, the light reaching him through a leafless intervening hedge, and the metallic curve of his sheep crook shone silver-bright in the same abounding greys. He came up to the boundary fence and stood to regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul. The fire was issuing from a long, straw sack, which was so far gone as to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye. However, a hay or a wheat rick well put together will resist combustion for a length of time if it begins on the outside. This, before Gabriel's eyes, was a rick of straw. Loosely put together, and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on the windward side, rising and falling in intensity like the coal of a cigar.

Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down with a whisking noise. Flames elongated and bent themselves about with a quiet roar but no crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds And behind these, burned hidden pyres Illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke To a lustrous yellow uniformity Individual straws in the foreground were consumed In a creeping movement of ruddy heat as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest. Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to being more serious than he had first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this, a series of others, composing the main corn produce of the farm, so that instead of the straw stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, There was no doubt about it.

was a regular connection between it and the remaining stacks of the group. Gabriel leapt over the hedge and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his thoughts were several yards in advance of his body which they

could never drag on fast enough. Oh man, a fire, a fire, a good master and a bad servant is fire. Oh, fire! I mean a bad servant and good master. Oh, Mark Clark, come. And you, Billy Smallbury. And you, Marianne Money. And you, Jan Coggan. And Matthew out there.

Other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that far from being alone, he was in great company, whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames and not at all by their owner's movements. The assemblage, belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling and its feelings into the form of commotion, set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose. Stop the draught under the wheat rick, cried Gabriel to those closest to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got under this sack, all would be lost. Get a tarpaulin, quick, said Gabriel. A rickcloth was brought and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the cornstack and stood up, vertical. Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet, said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat stack. A ladder, cried Gabriel. The ladder is against a straw wick and is burnt to a cinder, said a spectre-like form in the smoke. Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves as if he were going to engage in the operation of reed drawing, and digging in his feet and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep crook, he clambered up the beetling fence. He had once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bow and a ladder and some water. Billy Smallbury, one of the men who had been on the wagon, by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark had ascended, holding on beside oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beach bow in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all the fiery particles. On the ground, the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.

They were all tinged orange and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire that the horse might not become restive. He's a shepherd, said the woman on foot.

Yes, he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock frock is burnt in two holes, I declare. A fine young shepherd he is too, ma'am.

But whose shepherd is he? said the equestrian in a clear voice.

Don't know, ma'am. Don't any of the others know? "'Nobody at all. I've asked them. Quite a stranger, they say.'

The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around.

"'Do you think the barn is safe?' she said. "'Do you think the barn is safe, Yankoggan?' said the second woman,

passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction. "'Safe now. Leastwise, I think so.'

If this rick had gone, the barn would have followed. Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good. He's sitting on the top of the rick, whizzing his great long arms about like a windmill. He does work hard, said the young woman on horseback, looking up at Gabriel through her thick, woollen veil.

I wish he was a shepherd here. Don't any of you know his name? Never heard the man's name in my life or seed his former four.

The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend. Marianne, said the girl on horseback, go to him as he comes down.

Say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done.

Marianne stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the ladder She delivered her message Where is your master the farmer? Asked Gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now

It isn't a master, it is a mistress shepherd

A woman farmer Aye, I believe, and a rich one too, said a bystander Lately I came here from a distance, took on her uncle's farm who died suddenly. Used to measure his money in half-pint cups. I say now she'd business in every bank in Casterbridge and thinks no more a play in pitch and toss sovereign than you or I do pitch half-penny. Not a bit in the world, Shepard.

That sheep, back there upon the pony, said Marianne. Your face are covered up in that black cloth with holes in it.

Oak, his features smudged, grimy and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-frock burnt into holes and dripping with water, the ash stem of his sheep-crook, charred six inches shorter, advanced with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him to the slight female form in the saddle. He lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry. Stepping close to her hanging feet, he said in a hesitating voice, Do you happen to want a shepherd, mum? She lifted the wool veil tied round her face and looked all astonishment. Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling, Bathsheba Everdeen, were face to face. Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice, Do you want a shepherd, ma'am?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.