rewed down; and then you
didn't, but took them away! Oh Jude, you are cruel to me too!"

"She's been wanting me to dig out the grave again, and let her get
to the coffins," said the man with the spade. "She ought to be took
home, by the look o' her. She is hardly responsible, poor thing,
seemingly. Can't dig 'em up again now, ma'am. Do ye go home with
your husband, and take it quiet, and thank God that there'll be
another soon to swage yer grief."

But Sue kept asking piteously: "Can't I see them once more--just
once! Can't I? Only just one little minute, Jude? It would not
take long! And I should be so glad, Jude! I will be so good, and
not disobey you ever any more, Jude, if you will let me? I would go
home quietly afterwards, and not want to see them any more! Can't I?
Why can't I?"

Thus she went on. Jude was thrown into such acute sorrow that he
almost felt he would try to get the man to accede. But it could
do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it
was imperative to get her home at once. So he coaxed her, and
whispered tenderly, and put his arm round her to support her; till
she helplessly gave in, and was induced to leave the cemetery.

He wished to obtain a fly to take her back in, but economy being so
imperative she deprecated his doing so, and they walked along slowly,
Jude in black crape, she in brown and red clothing. They were to
have gone to a new lodging that afternoon, but Jude saw that it was
not practicable, and in course of time they entered the now hated
house. Sue was at once got to bed, and the doctor sent for.

Jude waited all the evening downstairs. At a very late hour the
intelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurely
born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.

III

Sue was convalescent, though she had hoped for death, and Jude had
again obtained work at his old trade. They were in other lodgings
now, in the direction of Beersheba, and not far from the Church of
Ceremonies--Saint Silas.

They would sit silent, more bodeful of the direct antagonism of
things than of their insensate and stolid obstructiveness. Vague
and quaint imaginings had haunted Sue in the days when her intellect
scintillated like a star, that the world resembled a stanza or melody
composed in a dream; it was wonderfully excellent to the half-aroused
intelligence, but hopelessly absurd at the full waking; that the
first cause worked automatical