DEAR JACK--I am unable to endure this life any longer, and I have
resolved to put an end to it. I told you I should run away if you
persisted in being a clergyman, and now I am doing it. One cannot
help one's nature. I have resolved to throw in my lot with Mr.
Vannicock, and I hope rather than expect you will forgive me.--L.

Then, with hardly a scrap of luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge in
the dusk of early evening. Almost on the very spot where her husband had
stood at their last tryst she beheld the outline of Vannicock, who had
come all the way from Bristol to fetch her.

'I don't like meeting here--it is so unlucky!' she cried to him. 'For
God's sake let us have a place of our own. Go back to the milestone, and
I'll come on.'

He went back to the milestone that stands on the north slope of the
ridge, where the old and new roads diverge, and she joined him there.

She was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet
him on the top. At last she inquired how they were going to travel.

He explained that he proposed to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other
side of Casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-cut
into the Ivell Road, and onward to that town. The Bristol railway was
open to Ivell.

This plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till
they neared Casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the
right at the Roman Amphitheatre and bearing round to Durnover Cross.