"Why am I on the wrong side of this door!" Perhaps it is as well to recite the outline of Hardy's story of _Tess_ at this stage of our pilgrimage. Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of poor and feeble-minded parents and descendant of a noble but somewhat wild old family, was forcibly seduced by a wealthy young loafer whose father had taken, with no right to it, Tess's proper name of "D'Urberville." A child was born, but died. Some years after Tess became betrothed to a clergyman's son, Angel Clare. On their wedding night Tess confessed to him her past relations with Alec D'Urberville, and thereupon Clare, a man who was not without sin himself, left her. In the end Fate conspired to force Tess back into the protection of Alec. Clare, who cannot be looked upon as anything but half-baked and insincere, returns repentant from Canada and finds her living with D'Urberville. In order to be free to return to Clare, Tess stabbed Alec to the heart, for which she was arrested, tried and hanged. In this romance Bere Regis figures as "Kingsbere," and the church is the subject of many references. It was on one of the "canopied, altar-shaped" Turberville tombs that poor Tess noticed, with a sudden qualm of blank fear, that the effigy moved. "As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that the figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense of not having been alone was so violent that she almost fainted, not, however, till she had recognised Alec D'Urberville in the form." Here Alec D'Urberville stamped with his heel heavily above the stones of the ancient family vault, whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below, and remarked airily to Tess: "A family gathering is it not, with these old fellows under us here?" In the south wall a doorway which has been long filled in can still be traced. There is nothing of special note in this alteration, but a legend has been handed down which is worth recording here. It is said that one of the Turberville family quarrelled with the vicar of Bere Regis and ended a stormy meeting by declaring that he would never again pass through the old door of the church. As time went on the lure of the Turberville dead in the ancient shrine obsessed him and he grew to regret the haste in which he had cut himself off from the ancient possessors of his land. After some years Fate arranged a chance meeting between the vicar and Turberville at a village feast, and under the influence of the general good-fellowship and merry-making they buried the hatchet and fell to discussing old times and friends. When time came for the breaking up of the entertainment it was only Turberville's dogged determination to keep his vow which prevented a return to the old happy conditions before the breach of friendship.