r some time, and might
have worked himself into a dignified position of some sort had he not
indulged in the wild freak of enlisting. I have much doubt if ever
little Fanny will surprise us in the way she mentions--very much
doubt. A silly girl!--silly girl!"

The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy
Ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny
trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension
of face.

"Now, Cain Ball," said Oak, sternly, "why will you run so fast and
lose your breath so? I'm always telling you of it."

"Oh--I--a puff of mee breath--went--the--wrong way, please, Mister
Oak, and made me cough--hok--hok!"

"Well--what have you come for?"

"I've run to tell ye," said the junior shepherd, supporting his
exhausted youthful frame against the doorpost, "that you must come
directly. Two more ewes have twinned--that's what's the matter,
Shepherd Oak."

"Oh, that's it," said Oak, jumping up, and dimissing for the present
his thoughts on poor Fanny. "You are a good boy to run and tell me,
Cain, and you shall smell a large plum pudding some day as a treat.
But, before we go, Cainy, bring the tarpot, and we'll mark this lot
and have done with 'em."

Oak took from his illimitable pockets a marking iron, dipped it
into the pot, and imprinted on the buttocks of the infant sheep the
initials of her he delighted to muse on--"B. E.," which signified to
all the region round that henceforth the lambs belonged to Farmer
Bathsheba Everdene, and to no one else.

"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off. Good morning, Mr. Boldwood."
The shepherd lifted the sixteen large legs and four small bodies he
had himself brought, and vanished with them in the direction of the
lambing field hard by--their frames being now in a sleek and hopeful
state, pleasantly contrasting with their death's-door plight of half
an hour before.

Boldwood followed him a little way up the field, hesitated, and
turned back. He followed him again with a last resolve, annihilating
return. On approaching the nook in which the fold was constructed,
the farmer drew out his pocket-book, unfastened it, and allowed it to
lie open on his hand. A letter was revealed--Bathsheba's.

"I was going to ask you, Oak," he said, with unreal carelessness, "if
you know whose writing this is?"

Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly, with a flushed
face, "Miss Everdene's."

Oa