They talked in this strain until they had supped, then Hardy, not seeing a bell, opened the door and shouted to Miss Bax to clear away. When the door was opened they could hear voices in the back room beyond, and a gush of Cavendish tobacco smoke came in. Some friends of Bax had called in a casual way by the back entrance, across the fields, which meant several drinks, clouds of tobacco, and all the gossip of the social sphere which Bax and his friends adorned. When Miss Bax had cleared the table she placed a bottle of whisky upon it at the request of Hardy, also cold water and glasses. She then said there was no hurry to go to bed. Father did not go to bed until eleven, and she left them with a smile as though they were a young married couple spending their honeymoon in Bax's farm, instead of one of them being an honest, generous-hearted young sailor intent on doing his dead best to rescue a young English lady from bitter privation, and perhaps from miserable disgrace; and the other of them being a broken-hearted girl hurrying from a home of tyranny and drink, a home of one base nature, and of one spiritless one (which is likewise a baseness), with a future as dark as the night that lay outside, in whose funeral tapestries her imagination alone could have beheld the stirrings of the life that was to give her content and liberty, in whose impenetrable depths she found no more than a minute gleam of light from Hardy's strange and chanceful encounter with her while she lay in a swoon deep as death. With her consent the sailor lighted a pipe. The girl sat in a chair opposite to him, her head a little on one side, hands on her hips, all in the old, fascinating, coquettish, incommunicable way. Outside the night lay in a thin gloom, and they saw the stars shining above the trees. The hush of the sleeping land was in the air. You heard nothing but the silver tinkling of a natural fall of water that ran down the hillside, and fell purely in a stone bowl for men, horses, and dogs to drink. "You are a plucky girl," said Hardy; "but I think you are attempting more than you understand. You talk, for instance, of going to the workhouse. You are the last girl in the world to go to the workhouse. Think of dying in a workhouse," he continued, whilst she watched him without smiling. "Creatures bend over your bed, and say, 'Isn't she gone yet?' That's the sympathy of the workhouse." "I want to get out of England, abroad, and be independent," said Julia. He looked at an old clock upon the mantelpiece. The hour was about eight. He asked her if she would have some whisky and water, and on her declining, he mixed a draught for himself, then went to the door and called to Bax, leaving the girl to wonder what he meant to do. The farmer arrived. "Bax," said the sailor, "you have given us a capital supper." "I'm much obliged to you, sir," answered Bax.