"Fanny Robin -- Miss everdene's youngest servant -can't be found. They've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isn't come in. And they don't know what to do about going to hed for fear of locking her out. They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d'think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor girl."
"O -- 'tis burned -- 'tis burned!" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry lips.
"No -- 'tis drowned!" said Tall.
"Or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid sense of detail.
"Well -- Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to bed. What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl, mis'ess is almost wild."
They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from his hole. There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared eyes.
From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the air.
"Are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously.
"Yes, ma'am, several." said Susan Tall's husband.
"Tomorrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin. Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. She must have left whilst we were all at the fire."
"I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the parish, ma'am?" asked Jacob Smallbury.
"I don't know." said Bathsheba.
"I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am." said two or three.
"It is hardly likely, either." continued Bathsheba.
"For any lover of hers might have come to the house if he had been a respectable lad. The most mysterious matter connected with her absence -- indeed, the only thing which gives me serious alarm -- is that she was seen to go out of the house by Maryann with only her indoor working gown on -- not even a bonnet."
"And you mean, ma'am, excusing my words, that a young woman would hardly go to see her young man without dressing up." said Jacob, turning his mental vision upon past experiences. "That's true -- she would not, ma'am."
"She had, I think, a bundle, though I couldn't see very well." said a female voice from another window, which seemed that of Maryann. "But she had no young man about here. Hers lives in Casterbridge, and I believe he's a soldier."