 may be
mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat
high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote
height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing
the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy
flesh on account of the exertion, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a
bucket from a well.
    But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his
fields on a certain December morning - sunny and exceedingly mild - might have
regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice
that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even
remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth
would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been
exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and
urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is
a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a
quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to
impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked
unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of
the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends
for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well,
which Oak did not.
    He had just reached the time of life at which young is ceasing to be the
prefix of man in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine
growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed
the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in
the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they
become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife
and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
    The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill.
Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk-Newton.
Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an
ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses,
a waggoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was
laden with household goods and window plants, and on the
