averous and
saucer-eyed. Whenever Tess lifted her head she beheld always the
great upgrown straw-stack, with the men in shirt-sleeves upon it,
against the gray north sky; in front of it the long red elevator
like a Jacob's ladder, on which a perpetual stream of threshed straw
ascended, a yellow river running uphill, and spouting out on the top
of the rick.

She knew that Alec d'Urberville was still on the scene, observing
her from some point or other, though she could not say where. There
was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew
near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men
unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that
performance--sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with
terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.

But there was another hour's work before the layer of live rats at
the base of the stack would be reached; and as the evening light in
the direction of the Giant's Hill by Abbot's-Cernel dissolved away,
the white-faced moon of the season arose from the horizon that lay
towards Middleton Abbey and Shottsford on the other side. For the
last hour or two Marian had felt uneasy about Tess, whom she could
not get near enough to speak to, the other women having kept up their
strength by drinking ale, and Tess having done without it through
traditionary dread, owing to its results at her home in childhood.
But Tess still kept going: if she could not fill her part she would
have to leave; and this contingency, which she would have regarded
with equanimity and even with relief a month or two earlier, had
become a terror since d'Urberville had begun to hover round her.

The sheaf-pitchers and feeders had now worked the rick so low that
people on the ground could talk to them. To Tess's surprise Farmer
Groby came up on the machine to her, and said that if she desired to
join her friend he did not wish her to keep on any longer, and would
send somebody else to take her place. The "friend" was d'Urberville,
she knew, and also that this concession had been granted in obedience
to the request of that friend, or enemy. She shook her head and
toiled on.

The time for the rat-catching arrived at last, and the hunt began.
The creatures had crept downwards with the subsidence of the rick
till they were all together at the bottom, and being now uncovered
from their last refuge, they ran across the open ground in all
directions, a lou