one about two hundred yards along the down, he
heard a "hoi-hoi!" uttered behind him, in a piping note of more
treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies
itself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl
racing after him, waving a white handkerchief.

Oak stood still--and the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba
Everdene. Gabriel's colour deepened: hers was already deep, not, as
it appeared, from emotion, but from running.

"Farmer Oak--I--" she said, pausing for want of breath pulling up in
front of him with a slanted face and putting her hand to her side.

"I have just called to see you," said Gabriel, pending her further
speech.

"Yes--I know that," she said panting like a robin, her face red and
moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off
the dew. "I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should
have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say--that
my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me--"

Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear,"
he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. "Wait a bit till
you've found your breath."

"--It was quite a mistake--aunt's telling you I had a young man
already," Bathsheba went on. "I haven't a sweetheart at all--and I
never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was
SUCH a pity to send you away thinking that I had several."

"Really and truly I am glad to hear that!" said Farmer Oak, smiling
one of his long special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held
out his hand to take hers, which, when she had eased her side by
pressing it there, was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her
loud-beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so
that it slipped through his fingers like an eel."

"I have a nice snug little farm," said Gabriel, with half a degree
less assurance than when he had seized her hand.

"Yes; you have."

"A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still, it will soon
be paid off, and though I am only an every-day sort of man, I have
got on a little since I was a boy." Gabriel uttered "a little" in a
tone to show her that it was the complacent form of "a great deal."
He continued: "When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice
as hard as I do now."

He went forward and stretched out his arm again. Bathsheba had
overtaken him at a point beside which stood a