"I've run to tell ye." said the junior shepherd, supporting his exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost," that you must come directly'.
Two more ewes have twinned — that's what's the matter, Shepherd Oak."
"Oh, that's it." said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present his thoughts on poor Fanny.
"You are a good boy to run and tell me, Cain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat.
But, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot and have done with 'em."
Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it into the pot, and imprintcd on the buttocks of the infant sheep the initials of her he delighted to muse on —
"B.
E.." which signified to all the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to Farmer Bathsheba Everdene, and to no one else.
"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off Good morning, Mr. Boldwood."
The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he had himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the lambing field hard by — their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful state, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half an hour before.
Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and turned back.
He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating return.
On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed, the farmer drew out his pocketbook, unfastened it, and allowed it to lie open on his hand.
A letter was revealed — Bathsheba's.
"I was going to ask you, Oak." he said, with unreal carelessness, "if you know whose writing this is? " Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed face, " Miss Everdene's."
Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name.
He now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought."
The letter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry would not have been necessary. Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready with their "Is it I?" in preference to objective reasoning.
"The question was perfectly fair." he returned — and there was something incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he applied himself to an argument on a valentine.
"You know it is always expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where the — fun lies."
If the word "fun" had been "torture." it could not have been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance than was Boldwood's then."
Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to his house to breakfast — feeling twinges of shame and regret at having so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger.
He again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of the circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's information.
CHAPTER XVI
ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'
ON a weekday morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church called All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before mentioned, at the end of a service without a sermon.
They were about to disperse, when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central passage, arrested their attention.
The step echoed with a ring unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs.
Everybody looked.
A young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment which was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and by the determination upon his face to show none.
A slight flush had mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till he came close to the altar railing.
Here for a moment he stood alone.
The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion space.
He whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they also went up the chancel steps. "'Tis a wedding!" murmured some of the women, brightening.
"Let's wait!"
The majority again sat down.
There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones turned their heads.
From the interior face of the west wall of the tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery that struck the large bell in the tower.
Between the tower and the church was a close screen, the door of which was kept shut during services, hiding this grotesque clockwork from sight.
At present, however, the door was open, and the egress of the jack, the blows on the bell, and the mannikin's retreat into.the nook again, were visible to many, and audible through- out the church.
The jack had struck half-past eleven.
"Where's the woman?" whispered some of the spectators.
The young sergeant stood still with the abnormal rigidity of the old pillars around.
He faced the south- east, and was as silent as he was still.
The silence grew to be a noticeable thing as the minutes went on, and nobody else appeared, and not a soul moved.
The rattle of the quarter-jack again from its niche, its blows for three-quarters, its fussy retreat, were almost painfully abrupt, and caused many of the congregation to start palpably.
"I wonder where the woman is!" a voice whispered again.
There began now that slight shifting of feet, that artificial coughing among several, which betrays a nervous suspense.
At length there was a titter.
But the soldier never moved.