by the help of one crutch, she essayed a step, then
another, then a third, using the crutches now as walking-sticks only.
Thus she progressed till descending Mellstock Hill another milestone
appeared, and soon the beginning of an iron-railed fence came into
view. She staggered across to the first post, clung to it, and
looked around.

The Casterbridge lights were now individually visible, It was getting
towards morning, and vehicles might be hoped for, if not expected
soon. She listened. There was not a sound of life save that acme
and sublimation of all dismal sounds, the bark of a fox, its three
hollow notes being rendered at intervals of a minute with the
precision of a funeral bell.

"Less than a mile!" the woman murmured. "No; more," she added, after
a pause. "The mile is to the county hall, and my resting-place is on
the other side Casterbridge. A little over a mile, and there I am!"
After an interval she again spoke. "Five or six steps to a yard--six
perhaps. I have to go seventeen hundred yards. A hundred times six,
six hundred. Seventeen times that. O pity me, Lord!"

Holding to the rails, she advanced, thrusting one hand forward upon
the rail, then the other, then leaning over it whilst she dragged her
feet on beneath.

This woman was not given to soliloquy; but extremity of feeling
lessens the individuality of the weak, as it increases that of the
strong. She said again in the same tone, "I'll believe that the end
lies five posts forward, and no further, and so get strength to pass
them."

This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned
and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.

She passed five posts and held on to the fifth.

"I'll pass five more by believing my longed-for spot is at the next
fifth. I can do it."

She passed five more.

"It lies only five further."

She passed five more.

"But it is five further."

She passed them.

"That stone bridge is the end of my journey," she said, when the
bridge over the Froom was in view.

She crawled to the bridge. During the effort each breath of the
woman went into the air as if never to return again.

"Now for the truth of the matter," she said, sitting down. "The
truth is, that I have less than half a mile." Self-beguilement with
what she had known all the time to be false had given her strength to
come over half a mile that she would have been powerless to face in
the lump. The artifice s