Far from the Madding Crowd Read Online Free Page A

gentle swell of her maidenly bosom? Could he, even in his thoughts, venture any lower? It was as well for Gabriel’s self-possession that his musings were suddenly interrupted by the maternal bleatings of another hapless ewe, for his peace of mind was endangered more now than at any time in his previous life, such was the romantic effect of this incident upon him.

CHAPTER III
    A GIRL ON HORSEBACK — CONVERSATION
    The sluggish day began to break. Even its position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there Oak went again into the plantation. Lingering and musing here, he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an auburn pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle-shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the wind; possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch and after walking about ten yards along it found the hat among the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the loophole in the direction of the rider’s approach.
    She came up and looked around — then on the other side of the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article when an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for the present. The path, after passing the cowshed, bisected the plantation. It was not a bridle-path — merely a pedestrian’s track, and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. The girl, who wore no riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view, then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony’s back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into this position was that of a kingfisher — its noiselessness that of a hawk. Gabriel’s eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs.
    And what passed through the girl’s mind while she was thus lying? No clear thought, only a surrender to bodily enjoyment in the sensation of being carried away on a broad back by a beast stronger than herself, whose musk and sweat aroused in her intimations of a nameless pleasure. She felt along the whole length of her body the muscles of haunch and neck straining and flexing beneath her with a curious sense of anticipation. It was her delight so to lie, gazing up at the pattern of small leaves above her; she had this morning a sense of rightness in her physical world, of being at one with a mighty impulse that in her girlish fantasies might end in an encounter with a person, a young man, as yet unknown to her. If she had had more experience of the world, she might have called it lust; to her it was but a simple sensual moment in a life already well endowed with surprises of the senses.
    The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse’s head and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the plantation, she began to adopt another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth leather beneath her was unattainable sideways. Springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a bowed sapling, and satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of Tewnell Mill.
    Oak was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat in his hut, went again among his ewes.
    His