the horse by the head, he led him with the covered car out of
the yard to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the
inn.

Here Wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a
high bank that had been cast up at this place. Along the surface of
the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones
scudded and clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them
in heaps, plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into
darkness. Only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was
the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the
meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction.

He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the
midnight hour must have struck. A very strong doubt had arisen in his
mind if Eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet
knowing her nature he felt that she might. "Poor thing! 'tis like her
ill-luck," he murmured.

At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. To his
surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight. He now wished that he
had driven up the circuitous road to Mistover, a plan not adopted
because of the enormous length of the route in proportion to that
of the pedestrian's path down the open hillside, and the consequent
increase of labour for the horse.

At this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being
in a different direction the comer was not visible. The step paused,
then came on again.

"Eustacia?" said Wildeve.

The person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of Clym,
glistening with wet, whom Wildeve immediately recognized; but Wildeve,
who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by Yeobright.

He stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have
anything to do with the flight of his wife or not. The sight of
Yeobright at once banished Wildeve's sober feelings, who saw him again
as the deadly rival from whom Eustacia was to be kept at all hazards.
Hence Wildeve did not speak, in the hope that Clym would pass by
without particular inquiry.

While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible
above the storm and wind. Its origin was unmistakable--it was the
fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at
a point near the weir.

Both started. "Good God! can it be she?" said Clym.

"Why should it be she?" said Wildeve, in his alarm forgetting tha