ever it prevailed. Some were blasted and split as if by
lightning, black stains as from fire marking their sides, while the
ground at their feet was strewn with dead fir-needles and heaps of
cones blown down in the gales of past years. The place was called the
Devil's Bellows, and it was only necessary to come there on a March or
November night to discover the forcible reasons for that name. On the
present heated afternoon, when no perceptible wind was blowing, the
trees kept up a perpetual moan which one could hardly believe to be
caused by the air.

Here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon
resolution to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero
by her physical lassitude. To any other person than a mother it might
have seemed a little humiliating that she, the elder of the two women,
should be the first to make advances. But Mrs. Yeobright had well
considered all that, and she only thought how best to make her visit
appear to Eustacia not abject but wise.

From her elevated position the exhausted woman could perceive the roof
of the house below, and the garden and the whole enclosure of the
little domicile. And now, at the moment of rising, she saw a second
man approaching the gate. His manner was peculiar, hesitating, and
not that of a person come on business or by invitation. He surveyed
the house with interest, and then walked round and scanned the outer
boundary of the garden, as one might have done had it been the
birthplace of Shakespeare, the prison of Mary Stuart, or the Chateau
of Hougomont. After passing round and again reaching the gate he went
in. Mrs. Yeobright was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her
son and his wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed her that
the presence of an acquaintance would take off the awkwardness of
her first appearance in the house, by confining the talk to general
matters until she had begun to feel comfortable with them. She came
down the hill to the gate, and looked into the hot garden.

There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds,
rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung
like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and
foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small
apple tree, of the sort called Ratheripe, grew just inside the gate,
the only one which throve in the garden, by reason of the lightness of
the soil; and among the f