
    »No.«
    »At any rate, the large ones upon the stone staddles?«
    »They are not.«
    »Them under the hedge?«
    »No. I forgot to tell the thatcher to set about it.«
    »Nor the little one by the stile?«
    »Nor the little one by the stile. I overlooked the ricks this year.«
    »Then not a tenth of your corn will come to measure, sir.«
    »Possibly not.«
    »Overlooked them,« repeated Gabriel slowly to himself. It is difficult to
describe the intensely dramatic effect that announcement had upon Oak at such a
moment. All the night he had been feeling that the neglect he was labouring to
repair was abnormal and isolated - the only instance of the kind within the
circuit of the county. Yet at this very time, within the same parish, a greater
waste had been going on, uncomplained of and disregarded. A few months earlier
Boldwood's forgetting his husbandry would have been as preposterous an idea as a
sailor forgetting he was in a ship. Oak was just thinking that whatever he
himself might have suffered from Bathsheba's marriage, here was a man who had
suffered more, when Boldwood spoke in a changed voice - that of one who yearned
to make a confidence and relieve his heart by an outpouring.
    »Oak, you know as well as I that things have gone wrong with me lately. I
may as well own it. I was going to get a little settled in life; but in some way
my plan has come to nothing.«
    »I thought my mistress would have married you,« said Gabriel, not knowing
enough of the full depths of Boldwood's love to keep silence on the farmer's
account, and determined not to evade discipline by doing so on his own.
»However, it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect,« he added,
with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured rather than subdued.
    »I daresay I am a joke about the parish,« said Boldwood, as if the subject
came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable lightness meant to express
his indifference.
    »O no - I don't think that.«
    »- But the real truth of the matter is that there was not, as some fancy,
any jilting on - her part. No engagement ever existed between me and Miss
Everdene. People say so, but it is untrue: she never promised me!« Boldwood
stood still now and turned his wild face to Oak.
