eared very
insignificant from any part of the heath as compared with the altitude
of Rainbarrow, and when all the little hills in the lower levels were
like an archipelago in a fog-formed Aegean, the reddleman came from
the brambled nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the
slopes of Mistover Knap.

Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen
round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to
converge upon a passer-by. Feathered species sojourned here in hiding
which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted
the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have been
seen in Egdon at one time. Marsh-harriers looked up from the valley by
Wildeve's. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird
so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in England; but
a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the African
truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to
enter Egdon no more.

A traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as Venn
observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with
regions unknown to man. Here in front of him was a wild mallard--just
arrived from the home of the north wind. The creature brought within
him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm
episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin
underfoot--the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird,
like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to
think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade of
memories.

Venn passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty
who lived up among them and despised them. The day was Sunday; but as
going to church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at
Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined upon the bold
stroke of asking for an interview with Miss Vye--to attack her position
as Thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat
too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain
astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. The great Frederick making war
on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful
Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the
reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement of
E