“How far is it to Weatherbury?”

“Five or six miles.”

Bathsheba had probably left Weatherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shottsford 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 report spoke truly they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked a set as any in the whole county. Oak resolved to sleep at Weatherbury that night on his way to Shottsford, and struck out at once into a footpath which had been recommended as a short cut to the village in question.

The path wended 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 the high-road 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 through a wood where the game-birds were rising to their roosts, and heard the crack-voiced cock-pheasants’ “cu-uck, cuck,” and the wheezy whistle of the hens.

By the time he had walked three or four miles, every shape on the landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He ascended a hill and could just discern ahead of him a waggon, 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 waggon, 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 waggon 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 waggon. Here he spread half of the hay as a bed, and, as well as he could in the darkness, 

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