f colours which from Bathsheba's style of
dress might have been judged to be her favourites. There were two
muffs, sable and ermine. Above all there was a case of jewellery,
containing four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings,
all of fine quality and manufacture. These things had been bought in
Bath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth.
They were all carefully packed in paper, and each package was
labelled "Bathsheba Boldwood," a date being subjoined six years in
advance in every instance.

These somewhat pathetic evidences of a mind crazed with care and love
were the subject of discourse in Warren's malt-house when Oak entered
from Casterbridge with tidings of sentence. He came in the afternoon,
and his face, as the kiln glow shone upon it, told the tale
sufficiently well. Boldwood, as every one supposed he would do, had
pleaded guilty, and had been sentenced to death.

The conviction that Boldwood had not been morally responsible for his
later acts now became general. Facts elicited previous to the trial
had pointed strongly in the same direction, but they had not been of
sufficient weight to lead to an order for an examination into the
state of Boldwood's mind. It was astonishing, now that a presumption
of insanity was raised, how many collateral circumstances were
remembered to which a condition of mental disease seemed to afford
the only explanation--among others, the unprecedented neglect of his
corn stacks in the previous summer.

A petition was addressed to the Home Secretary, advancing
the circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a
reconsideration of the sentence. It was not "numerously signed"
by the inhabitants of Casterbridge, as is usual in such cases, for
Boldwood had never made many friends over the counter. The shops
thought it very natural that a man who, by importing direct from
the producer, had daringly set aside the first great principle of
provincial existence, namely that God made country villages to supply
customers to county towns, should have confused ideas about the
Decalogue. The prompters were a few merciful men who had perhaps too
feelingly considered the facts latterly unearthed, and the result was
that evidence was taken which it was hoped might remove the crime in
a moral point of view, out of the category of wilful murder, and lead
it to be regarded as a sheer outcome of madness.

The upshot of the petition was waited f