Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Read Free Book Online

ventilating hole—of which there was one on each side of the hut.
    Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept open—that chosen being always on the side away from the wind. Closing the slide to windward he turned to open the other; on second thoughts the farmer considered that he would first sit down, leaving both closed for a minute or two, till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down.
    His head began to ache in an unwonted manner and, fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however, without having performed the necessary preliminary.
    How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During the first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully—somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his neckerchief.
    On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than this—astonishingly more—his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his collar.
    “Whatever is the matter?” said Oak vacantly.
    She seemed to experience mirth, but of too insignificant a kind to start enjoyment.
    “Nothing now,” she answered, “since you are not dead. It is a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours.”
    “Ah, the hut!” murmured Gabriel. “I gave ten pounds for that hut. But I’ll sell it, and sit under thatched hurdles as they did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw! It played me nearly the same trick the other day!” Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the floor.
    “It was not exactly the fault of the hut,” she observed in a tone which showed her to be that novelty among women—one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. “You should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed.”
    “Yes, I suppose I should,” said Oak absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.
    She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking himself like a Samson. “How can I thank ’ee?” he said at last gratefully, some of the natural rusty red having returned to his face.
    “O, never mind that,” said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel’s next remark, whatever that might prove to be.
    “How did you find me?”
    “I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when I came to the milking (it was so lucky, Daisy’s milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the next). The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across and looked round the hut the very first thing to see if the slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one, and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were like dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm, and no use.”
    “I wonder if I should have died?” Gabriel said in a low voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her.
    “O no!” the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic probability; to have saved a man from death involved talk that should harmonize with the dignity of