ife. There was a certain
animal form of refinement in his nature; and however pleasant a
strange condition might be whilst privations were easily warded off,
it was disadvantageously coarse when money was short. There was ever
present, too, the idea that he could claim a home and its comforts
did he but chose to return to England and Weatherbury Farm. Whether
Bathsheba thought him dead was a frequent subject of curious
conjecture. To England he did return at last; but the fact of
drawing nearer to Weatherbury abstracted its fascinations, and his
intention to enter his old groove at the place became modified. It
was with gloom he considered on landing at Liverpool that if he
were to go home his reception would be of a kind very unpleasant
to contemplate; for what Troy had in the way of emotion was an
occasional fitful sentiment which sometimes caused him as much
inconvenience as emotion of a strong and healthy kind. Bathsheba was
not a women to be made a fool of, or a woman to suffer in silence;
and how could he endure existence with a spirited wife to whom at
first entering he would be beholden for food and lodging? Moreover,
it was not at all unlikely that his wife would fail at her farming,
if she had not already done so; and he would then become liable for
her maintenance: and what a life such a future of poverty with her
would be, the spectre of Fanny constantly between them, harrowing
his temper and embittering her words! Thus, for reasons touching on
distaste, regret, and shame commingled, he put off his return from
day to day, and would have decided to put it off altogether if he
could have found anywhere else the ready-made establishment which
existed for him there.

At this time--the July preceding the September in which we find
at Greenhill Fair--he fell in with a travelling circus which was
performing in the outskirts of a northern town. Troy introduced
himself to the manager by taming a restive horse of the troupe,
hitting a suspended apple with a pistol-bullet fired from the
animal's back when in full gallop, and other feats. For his
merits in these--all more or less based upon his experiences as a
dragoon-guardsman--Troy was taken into the company, and the play
of Turpin was prepared with a view to his personation of the chief
character. Troy was not greatly elated by the appreciative spirit in
which he was undoubtedly treated, but he thought the engagement might
afford him a few weeks for con