ned
to the same knowledge by experiment as aforesaid, and jauntily
continue their indulgence in such experiments with terrible effect.
Sergeant Troy was one.

He had been known to observe casually that in dealing with womankind
the only alternative to flattery was cursing and swearing. There was
no third method. "Treat them fairly, and you are a lost man." he
would say.

This person's public appearance in Weatherbury promptly followed his
arrival there. A week or two after the shearing, Bathsheba, feeling
a nameless relief of spirits on account of Boldwood's absence,
approached her hayfields and looked over the hedge towards the
haymakers. They consisted in about equal proportions of gnarled and
flexuous forms, the former being the men, the latter the women, who
wore tilt bonnets covered with nankeen, which hung in a curtain upon
their shoulders. Coggan and Mark Clark were mowing in a less forward
meadow, Clark humming a tune to the strokes of his scythe, to
which Jan made no attempt to keep time with his. In the first mead
they were already loading hay, the women raking it into cocks and
windrows, and the men tossing it upon the waggon.

From behind the waggon a bright scarlet spot emerged, and went on
loading unconcernedly with the rest. It was the gallant sergeant,
who had come haymaking for pleasure; and nobody could deny that
he was doing the mistress of the farm real knight-service by this
voluntary contribution of his labour at a busy time.

As soon as she had entered the field Troy saw her, and sticking his
pitchfork into the ground and picking up his crop or cane, he came
forward. Bathsheba blushed with half-angry embarrassment, and
adjusted her eyes as well as her feet to the direct line of her path.

CHAPTER XXVI

SCENE ON THE VERGE OF THE HAY-MEAD

"Ah, Miss Everdene!" said the sergeant, touching his diminutive cap.
"Little did I think it was you I was speaking to the other night.
And yet, if I had reflected, the 'Queen of the Corn-market' (truth is
truth at any hour of the day or night, and I heard you so named in
Casterbridge yesterday), the 'Queen of the Corn-market.' I say, could
be no other woman. I step across now to beg your forgiveness a
thousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself
too strongly for a stranger. To be sure I am no stranger to the
place--I am Sergeant Troy, as I told you, and I have assisted your
uncle in these fields no end of times