e of the vast escarpment below which
stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still
in the dawn. Instead of the colourless air of the uplands, the
atmosphere down there was a deep blue. Instead of the great
enclosures of a hundred acres in which she was now accustomed to
toil, there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen
acres, so numerous that they looked from this height like the meshes
of a net. Here the landscape was whitey-brown; down there, as in
Froom Valley, it was always green. Yet it was in that vale that her
sorrow had taken shape, and she did not love it as formerly. Beauty
to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what
the thing symbolized.

Keeping the Vale on her right, she steered steadily westward; passing
above the Hintocks, crossing at right-angles the high-road from
Sherton-Abbas to Casterbridge, and skirting Dogbury Hill and
High-Stoy, with the dell between them called "The Devil's Kitchen".
Still following the elevated way she reached Cross-in-Hand, where
the stone pillar stands desolate and silent, to mark the site of a
miracle, or murder, or both. Three miles further she cut across the
straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Lane; leaving which
as soon as she reached it she dipped down a hill by a transverse lane
into the small town or village of Evershead, being now about halfway
over the distance. She made a halt here, and breakfasted a second
time, heartily enough--not at the Sow-and-Acorn, for she avoided
inns, but at a cottage by the church.

The second half of her journey was through a more gentle country, by
way of Benvill Lane. But as the mileage lessened between her and the
spot of her pilgrimage, so did Tess's confidence decrease, and her
enterprise loom out more formidably. She saw her purpose in such
staring lines, and the landscape so faintly, that she was sometimes
in danger of losing her way. However, about noon she paused by a
gate on the edge of the basin in which Emminster and its Vicarage
lay.

The square tower, beneath which she knew that at that moment the
Vicar and his congregation were gathered, had a severe look in
her eyes. She wished that she had somehow contrived to come on a
week-day. Such a good man might be prejudiced against a woman who
had chosen Sunday, never realizing the necessities of her case.
But it was incumbent upon her to go on now. She took off the thick
boots in which she ha