On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of 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 circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the wagon like a kettledrum-stick. He then distinguished voices in conversation, coming from the forpart 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’s Wain was getting towards a right angle with the Pole star, and Gabriel concluded that 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 had 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:—
“Be as ’twill, she’s a fine handsome body as far’s looks be concerned. But that’s only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as proud as a lucifer in their insides.”
“Ay—so ’a do seem, Billy Smallbury—so ’a do seem.” This 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 feymell—so ’tis said here and there.”
“Ah, now. If so be ’tis like that, I can’t look her in the face. Lord, no: not I—heh-heh-heh! 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 night-cap properly.”
“And not a married woman. Oh, the world!”
“And ’a can play the peanner, so ’tis said. Can play so clever that ’a can make a psalm tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for.”
“D’ye tell o’t! A happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man! And how do she pay?”
“That I don’t know, Master Poorgrass.”
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 retaining 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 corn-stack. 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 great distinctness. A rick-yard 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 rays. 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-stack, 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 be more serious than he had at 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
