He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale.  His imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants:  forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection.  Those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment.  Their records had perished long ago by the plough, while the works of these remained.  Yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics.  It reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of immortality.

Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight.  The year previous Thomasin had hardly been conscious of the season’s advance; this year she laid her heart open to external influences of every kind.  The life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her servants, came to Clym’s senses only in the form of sounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the scenes they signified.  A faint beat of half-seconds conjured up Thomasin rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised the picture of Humphrey’s, Fairway’s, or Sam’s heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a high key, betokened a visit from Grandfer Cantle; a sudden break-off in the Grandfer’s utterances implied the application to his lips of a mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting to go to market; for Thomasin, in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible pound for her little daughter.

One summer day Clym was in the garden, immediately outside the parlour window, which was as usual open.  He was looking at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been revived and restored by Thomasin to the state in which his mother had left them.  He heard a slight scream from Thomasin, who was sitting inside the room.

“O, how you frightened me!” she said to some one who had entered.  “I thought you were the ghost of yourself.”

Clym was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at the window.  To his astonishment there stood within the room Diggory Venn, no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues of an ordinary Christian countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat.  Nothing in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its great difference from what he had formerly been.  Red, and all approach to red, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him; for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much as reminders of the trade which has enriched them?