“Is that you?” said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.
“Come along to bed, do, you draw-latching rogue—keeping a body awake like this!”
“It isn’t Laban—’tis Gabriel Oak. I want the key of the granary.”
“Gabriel! What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban for?”
“Take it then. ’Tis on the nail. People coming disturbing women at this time of night ought——”
Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the tirade. Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen dragging four large waterproof coverings across the yard, and soon two of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug—two cloths to each. Two hundred pounds were secured. Three wheat-stacks remained open, and there were no more cloths. Oak looked under the staddles and found a fork. He mounted the third pile of wealth and began operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one over the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the material of some untied sheaves.
So far all was well. By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba’s property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that there was not much wind.
Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished not to re-appear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.
A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first arrow from the approaching storm, and it fell wide.
The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning. Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba’s bedroom, and soon a shadow moved to and fro upon the blind.
Then there came a third flash. Manœuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.