nd as thus viewed, they presented alternations of roan and bay,
in shapes like a Moorish arch, the tail being a streak down the
midst of each. Over these, and lost to the eye gazing in from the
outer light, the mouths of the same animals could be heard busily
sustaining the above-named warmth and plumpness by quantities of oats
and hay. The restless and shadowy figure of a colt wandered about a
loose-box at the end, whilst the steady grind of all the eaters was
occasionally diversified by the rattle of a rope or the stamp of a
foot.

Pacing up and down at the heels of the animals was Farmer Boldwood
himself. This place was his almonry and cloister in one: here, after
looking to the feeding of his four-footed dependants, the celibate
would walk and meditate of an evening till the moon's rays streamed
in through the cobwebbed windows, or total darkness enveloped the
scene.

His square-framed perpendicularity showed more fully now than in the
crowd and bustle of the market-house. In this meditative walk his
foot met the floor with heel and toe simultaneously, and his fine
reddish-fleshed face was bent downwards just enough to render obscure
the still mouth and the well-rounded though rather prominent and
broad chin. A few clear and thread-like horizontal lines were the
only interruption to the otherwise smooth surface of his large
forehead.

The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not
an ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observers
more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so
precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect
balance of enormous antagonistic forces--positives and negatives in
fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at
once. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling
not mastering him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid, it was
never slow. He was always hit mortally, or he was missed.

He had no light and careless touches in his constitution, either
for good or for evil. Stern in the outlines of action, mild in the
details, he was serious throughout all. He saw no absurd sides to
the follies of life, and thus, though not quite companionable in the
eyes of merry men and scoffers, and those to whom all things show
life as a jest, he was not intolerable to the earnest and those
acquainted with grief. Being a man who read all the dramas of life
seriously, if he failed to ple