The Woodlanders

Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared

themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which

was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to

walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than

the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country

well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the

church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing

by the gate.

"I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.

"I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn. And they

passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.

It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the

particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been

accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this was

the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which

Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road

just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to

join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had

missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock,

but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued

her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace.

Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave

alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood

there with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her

feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.

She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently passed on

their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could

not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she

acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers

then was.

Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard,

going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the

unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this

solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim

figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so

undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and

toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and

looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the

attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She

stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and

herself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in

their place.