ambiguity when she did not choose to be direct. In heaven she will
probably sit between the Heloises and the Cleopatras.




8--Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody


As soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire he clasped
the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his
courage, and began to run. There was really little danger in allowing a
child to go home alone on this part of Egdon Heath. The distance to
the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's
cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small
hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third and only remaining house was that
of Captain Vye and Eustacia, which stood quite away from the small
cottages and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly
populated slopes.

He ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming more courageous,
walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a
sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store. In the middle of
this the child stopped--from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a
light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise.

Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. The shrivelled voice
of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar. The thornbushes
which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for
they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting