Then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman, still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof.  After what had happened, it was impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of Wildeve’s intentions.  But her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets Venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way.  That this way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward enough; but the reddleman’s love was generous.

His first active step in watching over Thomasin’s interests was taken about seven o’clock the next evening, and was dictated by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy.  That Eustacia was somehow the cause of Wildeve’s carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been Venn’s conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them.  It did not occur to his mind that Eustacia’s love-signal to Wildeve was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home.  His instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to Thomasin’s happiness.

During the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of Thomasin; but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this.  He had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one.  After this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly-bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow.

He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain.  Nobody except himself came near the spot that night.

But the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman.  He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause for alarm.

The same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but Eustacia and Wildeve, the expected trysters, did not appear.

He pursued precisely the same course yet four nights longer, and without success.  But on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending from the valley.  They met in the little ditch encircling the tumulus—­the original excavation from which it had been thrown up by the ancient British people.

The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Thomasin, was aroused to strategy in a moment.  He instantly left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees.  When he had got as close as he might safely venture without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation of the trysting pair could not be overheard.