["I am going to give you," writes the Author of this book,
"one of my powerful and fascinating stories of life in modern
Wessex. It is well known, of course, that although I often
write agricultural novels, I invariably call a spade a spade,
and not an agricultural implement. Thus I am led to speak in
plain language of women, their misdoings, and their undoings.
Unstrained dialect is a speciality. If you want to know the
extent of Wessex, consult histories of the Heptarchy with
maps."]

CHAPTER I.

In our beautiful Blackmoor or Blakemore Vale, not far from the point
where the Melchester Road turns sharply towards Icenhurst on its way
to Wintoncester, having on one side the hamlet of Batton, on the
other the larger town of Casterbridge, stands the farmhouse wherewith
in this narrative we have to deal. There for generations had dwelt
the rustic family of the PEEPS, handing down from father to son
a well-stocked cow-shed and a tradition of rural virtues which
yet excluded not an overgreat affection on the male side for the
home-brewed ale and the homemade language in which, as is known,
the Wessex peasantry delights. On this winter morning the smoke rose
thinly into the still atmosphere, and faded there as though ashamed of
bringing a touch of Thermidorean warmth into a degree of temperature
not far removed from the zero-mark of the local Fahrenheit. Within,
a fire of good Wessex logs crackled cheerily upon the hearth. Old
ABRAHAM PEEP sat on one side of the fireplace, his figure yet telling
a tale of former vigour. On the other sat POLLY, his wife, an aimless,
neutral, slatternly peasant woman, such as in these parts a man may