230 The Keturn of the Native. BY THOMAS HARDY. BOOK SECOND. The cause that no persuasion or strategy could advance is unconsciously helped on, in a social sense, by the accident of the stranger's arrival; this event, by giving a new bias to emotions in one quarter, precipitates affairs in another with unexpected rapidity. CHAPTER I. TIDINGS OF THE COMER. ON fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain ephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, the majestic calm of Egdon Heath. They were activities which, beside those of a town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the ✓ ferment of stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of immobility. But here, away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imagine himself to be Adam without the least difficulty, they attracted the attention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep, and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at a safe distance. The performance was that of bringing together and building into a stack the furze-faggots which Humphrey had been cutting for the captain's use during the foregoing fine days. The stack was at the end of the dwelling, and the men engaged in building it were Humphrey and Sam, the old man looking on. It was a fine and quiet afternoon about three o'clock, but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from north-east to south-east, sunset had receded from north-west to south-west; but Egdon had hardly heeded the change. Eustacia was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like a kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimneycorner. The air was still, and, while she lingered a moment here alone, sounds of voices in conversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. She entered the recess, and, listening, looked |