When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a very few shillings for Prince’s carcase because of his decrepitude, Durbeyfield rose to the occasion.

“No,” said he stoically, “I won’t sell his old body.  When we d’Urbervilles was knights in the land, we didn’t sell our chargers for cat’s meat.  Let ’em keep their shillings!  He’ve served me well in his lifetime, and I won’t part from him now.”

He worked harder the next day in digging a grave for Prince in the garden than he had worked for months to grow a crop for his family.  When the hole was ready, Durbeyfield and his wife tied a rope round the horse and dragged him up the path towards it, the children following in funeral train.  Abraham and ’Liza-Lu sobbed, Hope and Modesty discharged their griefs in loud blares which echoed from the walls; and when Prince was tumbled in they gathered round the grave.  The bread-winner had been taken away from them; what would they do?

“Is he gone to heaven?” asked Abraham, between the sobs.

Then Durbeyfield began to shovel in the earth, and the children cried anew.  All except Tess.  Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the light of a murderess.

V

The haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became disorganized forthwith.  Distress, if not penury, loomed in the distance.  Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.

Tess, meanwhile, as the one who had dragged her parents into this quagmire, was silently wondering what she could do to help them out of it; and then her mother broached her scheme.

“We must take the ups wi’ the downs, Tess,” said she; “and never could your high blood have been found out at a more called-for moment.  You must try your friends.  Do ye know that there is a very rich Mrs d’Urberville living on the outskirts o’ The Chase, who must be our relation?  You must go to her and claim kin, and ask for some help in our trouble.”

“I shouldn’t care to do that,” says Tess.  “If there is such a lady, ’twould be enough for us if she were friendly—­not to expect her to give us help.”

“You could win her round to do anything, my dear.  Besides, perhaps there’s more in it than you know of.  I’ve heard what I’ve heard, good-now.”

The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more deferential than she might otherwise have been to the maternal wish; but she could not understand why her mother should find such satisfaction in contemplating an enterprise of, to her, such doubtful profit.  Her mother might have made inquiries, and have discovered that this Mrs d’Urberville was a lady of unequalled virtues and charity.  But Tess’s pride made the part of poor relation one of particular distaste to her.