was found. They searched on for some time, but no other was to be seen.
“Never mind,” said Wildeve; “let’s play with one.”
“Agreed,” said Venn.
Down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; and the play went on smartly. But Fortune had unmistakably fallen in love with the reddleman tonight. He won steadily, till he was the owner of fourteen more of the gold pieces. Seventy-nine of the hundred guineas were his, Wildeve possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the two opponents was now singular. Apart from motions, a complete diorama of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. A diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have been possible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles betrayed nothing at all. Wildeve played on with the recklessness of despair.
“What’s that?” he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they both looked up.
They were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high, standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. A moment’s inspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers, their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazed intently.
“Hoosh!” said Wildeve, and the whole forty or fifty animals at once turned and galloped away. Play was again resumed.
Ten minutes passed away. Then a large death’s head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Wildeve had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it was impossible.
“What the infernal!” he shrieked. “Now, what shall we do? Perhaps I have thrown six — have you any matches?”
“None,” said Venn.
“Christian had some — I wonder where he is. Christian!”
But there was no reply to Wildeve’s shout, save a mournful whining from the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. Both men looked blankly round without rising. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and fern. These lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low magnitude.
“Ah — glowworms,” said Wildeve. “Wait a minute. We can continue the game.”
Venn sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had gathered thirteen glowworms — as many as he could find in a space of four or five minutes — upon a fox-glove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. The reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary return with these. “Determined to go on, then?” he said drily.
“I always am!” said Wildeve angrily. And shaking the glowworms from the leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on the stone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box, over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. The game was again renewed. It happened to be that season of the year at which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three.
The incongruity between the men’s deeds and their environment was great. Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which they sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players.
Wildeve had lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him.
“I won’t play any more — you’ve been tampering with the dice,” he shouted.
“How — when they were your own?” said the reddleman.
“We’ll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake — it may cut off my ill luck. Do you refuse?”
“No — go on,” said Venn.
“O, there they are again — damn them!” cried Wildeve, looking up. The heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candlelight could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour.
“What a plague those creatures are — staring at me so!” he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as before.
Wildeve had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. Wildeve threw three points; Venn two, and raked in the coins. The other seized the die, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he would bite it in pieces. “Never give in — here are my last five!” he cried, throwing them down.
“Hang the glowworms — they are going out. Why don’t you burn, you little fools? Stir them up with a thorn.”
He probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over, till the bright side of their tails was upwards.
“There’s light enough. Throw on,” said Venn.
Wildeve brought down the box within the shining circle and looked eagerly. He had thrown ace. “Well done! — I said it would turn, and it has turned.” Venn said nothing; but his hand shook slightly.
He threw ace also.
“O!” said Wildeve. “Curse me!”
The die smacked the stone a second time. It was ace again. Venn looked gloomy, threw — the die was seen to be lying in two pieces, the cleft sides uppermost.
“I’ve thrown nothing at all,” he said.
“Serves me right — I split the die with my teeth. Here — take your money. Blank is less than one.”
“I don’t wish it.”
“Take it, I say — you’ve won it!” And Wildeve threw the stakes against the reddleman’s chest. Venn gathered them up, arose, and withdrew from the hollow, Wildeve sitting stupefied.
When he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguished lantern in his hand, went towards the highroad. On reaching it he stood still. The silence of night pervaded the whole heath except in one direction; and that was towards Mistover. There he could hear the noise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriagelamps descending the hill. Wildeve screened himself under a bush and waited.
The vehicle came on and passed before him. It was a hired carriage, and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. There sat Eustacia and Yeobright, the arm of the latter being round her waist. They turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home which Clym had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward.
Wildeve forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lost love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometrical progression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopeless division. Brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable of feeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn.
About the same moment that Wildeve stepped into the highway Venn also had reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearing the same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up. When he saw who
