"Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go
to bed. What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the
girl, mis'ess is almost wild."

They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old
maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from
his hole. There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down
again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red,
bleared eyes.

From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and
shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the
air.

"Are any of my men among you?" she said anxiously.

"Yes, ma'am, several," said Susan Tall's husband.

"To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in
the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin.
Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet. She must have
left whilst we were all at the fire."

"I beg yer pardon, but had she any young man courting her in the
parish, ma'am?" asked Jacob Smallbury.

"I don't know," said Bathsheba.

"I've never heard of any such thing, ma'am," said two or three.