ft the bosoms of the clouds.
Here self-defence was impossible, and individual drops stuck into
her like the arrows into Saint Sebastian. She was enabled to avoid
puddles by the nebulous paleness which signified their presence,
though beside anything less dark than the heath they themselves would
have appeared as blackness.

Yet in spite of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started.
To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice
in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not
scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever,
but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational,
her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in
her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much
discomfort, lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold.

If the path is well known the difficulty at such times of keeping
therein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel to the feet;
but once lost it is irrecoverable. Owing to her baby, who somewhat
impeded Thomasin's view forward and distracted her mind, she did at
last lose the track. This mishap occurred when she was descending an
open slope about two-thirds home. Instead of attempting, by wandering
hither and thither, the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread,
she went straight on, trusting for guidance to her general knowledge
of the contours, which was scarcely surpassed by Clym's or by that of
the heath-croppers themselves.

At length Thomasin reached a hollow and began to discern through the
rain a faint blotted radiance, which presently assumed the oblong form
of an open door. She knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was
soon aware of the nature of the door by its height above the ground.

"Why, it is Diggory Venn's van, surely!" she said.

A certain secluded spot near Rainbarrow was, she knew, often Venn's
chosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood; and she guessed at
once that she had stumbled upon this mysterious retreat. The question
arose in her mind whether or not she should ask him to guide her into
the path. In her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would
appeal to him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing before
his eyes at this place and season. But when, in pursuance of this
resolve, Thomasin reached the van and looked in she found it to be
untenanted; though there was no doubt that it was the reddleman's.
T