It was certainly a rustle of footsteps.
Her own instantly fell as gently as snowflakes.
She reassured herself by a remembrance that the path was public, and that the traveller was probably some villager returning home; regetting, at the same time, that the meeting should be about to occur in the darkest point of her route, even though only just outside her own door.
The noise approached, came close, and a figure was apparently on the point of gliding past her when something tugged at her skirt and pinned it forcibly to the ground.
The instantaneous check nearly threw Bathsheba off her balance.
In recovering she struck against warm clothes and buttons.
"A rum start, upon my soul!" said a masculine voice, a foot or so above her head.
"Have I hurt you, mate?"
"No." said Bathsheba, attempting to shrink a way.
"We have got hitched together somehow, I think."
"Yes."
"Are you a woman?"
"Yes."
"A lady, I should have said."
"It doesn't matter."
"I am a man."
"Oh!"
Bathsheba softly tugged again, but to no purpose.
"Is that a dark lantern you have? I fancy so." said the man.
"Yes."
"If you'll allow me I'll open it, and set you free."
A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment.
The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He was a soldier.
His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silense.
Gloom, the genius loci at all times hitherto, was now totally overthrown, less by the lantern-light than by what the lantern lighted.
The contrast of this revelation with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.
It was immediately apparent that the military man's spur had become entangled in the gimp which decorated the skirt of her dress.
He caught a view of her face.
"I'll unfasten you in one moment, miss." he said, with new-born gallantry.
"O no — I can do it, thank you." she hastily replied, and stooped for the performance.
The unfastening was not such a trifling affair.
The rowel of the spur had so wound itself among the gimp cords in those few moments, that separation was likely to be a matter of time.
He too stooped, and the lantern standing on the ground betwixt them threw the gleam from its open side among the fir-tree needles and the blades of long damp grass with the effect of a large glowworm.
It radiated upwards into their faces, and sent over half the plantation gigantic shadows of both man and woman, each dusky shape becoming distorted and mangled upon the tree-trunks till it wasted to nothing.
He looked hard into her eyes when she raised them for a moment; Bathsheba looked down again, for his gaze was too strong to be received point-blank with her own.
But she had obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve.
Bathsheba pulled again.
"You are a prisoner, miss; it is no use blinking the matter." said the soldier, drily.
"I must cut your dress if you are in such a hurry."
"Yes — please do!" she exclaimed, helplessly. "
"It wouldn't be necessary if you could wait a moment," and he unwound a cord from the little wheel.
She withdrew her own hand, but, whether by accident or design, he touched it.
Bathsheba was vexed; she hardly knew why.
His unravelling went on, but it nevertheless seemed coming to no end.
She looked at him again.
"Thank you for the sight of such a beautiful face!" said the young sergeant, without ceremony.
She coloured with embarrassment. "'Twas un- willingly shown." she replied, stiffly, and with as much dignity - which was very little — as she could infuse into a position of captivity
"I like you the better for that incivility, miss." he said.
"I should have liked — I wish — you had never shown yourself to me by intruding here!"
She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian musketry.