she thought of asking
'Liza-Lu to come in and sit down. When she had done so, and 'Liza-Lu
was having some tea, she came to a decision. It was imperative that
she should go home. Her agreement did not end till Old Lady-Day, the
sixth of April, but as the interval thereto was not a long one she
resolved to run the risk of starting at once.

To go that night would be a gain of twelve-hours; but her sister
was too tired to undertake such a distance till the morrow. Tess
ran down to where Marian and Izz lived, informed them of what had
happened, and begged them to make the best of her case to the farmer.
Returning, she got Lu a supper, and after that, having tucked the
younger into her own bed, packed up as many of her belongings as
would go into a withy basket, and started, directing Lu to follow
her next morning.

L

She plunged into the chilly equinoctial darkness as the clock struck
ten, for her fifteen miles' walk under the steely stars. In lonely
districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless
pedestrian, and knowing this, Tess pursued the nearest course along
by-lanes that she would almost have feared in the day-time; but
marauders were wanting now, and spectral fears were driven out of
her mind by thoughts of her mother. Thus she proceeded mile after
mile, ascending and descending till she came to Bulbarrow, and about
midnight looked from that height into the abyss of chaotic shade
which was all that revealed itself of the vale on whose further side
she was born. Having already traversed about five miles on the
upland, she had now some ten or eleven in the lowland before her
journey would be finished. The winding road downwards became just
visible to her under the wan starlight as she followed it, and
soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the
difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the
heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which
turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on
these heavy soils. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it
seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near
being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its
presence. The harts that had been hunted here, the witches that had
been pricked and ducked, the green-spangled fairies that "whickered"
at you as you passed;--the place teemed with beliefs in them still,
and