section of a household, sitting on the summit of a load that had also drawn up at a little distance from the same inn. She followed one of the mug’s journeys upward, and perceived it to be clasped by hands whose owner she well knew. Tess went towards the wagon.
“Marian and Izz!” she cried to the girls, for it was they, sitting with the moving family at whose house they had lodged. “Are you house-ridding today, like everybody else?”
They were, they said. It had been too rough a life for them at Flintcomb-Ash, and they had come away, almost without notice, leaving Groby to prosecute them if he chose. They told Tess their destination, and Tess told them hers.
Marian leant over the load, and lowered her voice. “Do you know that the gentleman who follows ’ee—you’ll guess who I mean—came to ask for ’ee at Flintcomb after you had gone? We didn’t tell’n where you was, knowing you wouldn’t wish to see him.”
“Ah—but I did see him!” Tess murmured. “He found me.”
“And do he know where you be going?”
“I think so.”
“Husband come back?”
“No.”
She bade her acquaintance goodbye—for the respective carters had now come out from the inn—and the two wagons resumed their journey in opposite directions; the vehicle whereon sat Marian, Izz, and the ploughman’s family with whom they had thrown in their lot, being brightly painted, and drawn by three powerful horses with shining brass ornaments on their harness; while the wagon on which Mrs. Durbeyfield