 nook
which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the slopes of Mistover Knap.
    Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen round
eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to converge upon a
passer-by. Feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would have created
wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted the spot, and not many years before
this five and twenty might have been seen in Egdon at one time. Marsh-harriers
looked up from the valley by Wildeve's. A cream-coloured courser had used to
visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen
in England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the
African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to
enter Egdon no more.
    A traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as Venn
observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with regions
unknown to man. Here in front of him was a wild mallard-just arrived from the
home of the north wind. The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern
knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snow-storm episodes, glittering auroral
effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot, - the category of his
commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed
as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable
reality was worth a decade of memories.
    Venn passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty who
lived up among them and despised them. The day was Sunday; but as going to
church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at Egdon, this made
little difference. He had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an
interview with Miss Vye - to attack her position as Thomasin's rival either by
art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of
gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings.
The great Frederick making war on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing
terms to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex
than the reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement of
Eustacia.
    To call at the captain's cottage was always more or less an undertaking for
the inferior inhabitants. Though occasionally chatty, his moods were erratic,
and nobody could be certain how he would behave at any particular moment.
Eustacia was reserved, and lived very much to herself. Except the daughter of
one of the cotters, who was their
