 black and white.«
    »Did you find out his name?«
    »No; nobody knew it. I believe he was higher in rank than a private.«
    Gabriel remained musing and said nothing, for he was in doubt.
    »Well, we are not likely to know more to-night, at any rate,« said
Bathsheba. »But one of you had better run across to Farmer Boldwood's and tell
him that much.«
    She then rose; but before retiring, addressed a few words to them with a
pretty dignity, to which her mourning dress added a soberness that was hardly to
be found in the words themselves:
    »Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't yet know my
powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you serve me
well, so shall I serve you. Don't any unfair ones among you (if there are any
such, but I hope not) suppose that because I'm a woman I don't understand the
difference between bad goings-on and good.«
    (All.) »No'm!«
    (Liddy.) »Excellent well said.«
    »I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up;
and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish
you all.«
    (All.) »Yes'm!«
    »And so good-night.«
    (All.) »Good-night, ma'am.«
    Then this small thesmothete stepped from the table, and surged out of the
hall, her black silk dress licking up a few straws and dragging them along with
a scratching noise upon the floor. Liddy elevating her feelings to the occasion
from a sense of grandeur, floated off behind Bathsheba with a milder dignity not
entirely free from travesty, and the door was closed.
 

                                   Chapter XI

                    Outside the Barracks - Snow - A Meeting

For dreariness nothing could surpass a prospect in the outskirts of a certain
town and military station, many miles north of Weatherbury, at a later hour on
this same snowy evening - if that may be called a prospect of which the chief
constituent was darkness.
    It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any
great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes
solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of
memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have
been passed by, and anticipation
