He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found Venn and Thomasin ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence.  The wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which Venn’s head milker and handy man had driven from Stickleford to fetch them in; little Eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of the last century.

“Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again,” said Thomasin as she bent down to wish her cousin good night.  “It will be rather lonely for you, Clym, after the hubbub we have been making.”

“O, that’s no inconvenience,” said Clym, smiling rather sadly.  And then the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and Yeobright entered the house.  The ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not a soul remained; Christian, who acted as cook, valet, and gardener to Clym, sleeping at his father’s house.  Yeobright sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long time.  His mother’s old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers.  But to Clym she was almost a presence there, now as always.  Whatever she was in other people’s memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for Eustacia could not obscure.  But his heart was heavy; that mother had not crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart.  And events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care.  He should have heeded her for Eustacia’s sake even more than for his own.  “It was all my fault,” he whispered.  “O, my mother, my mother! would to God that I could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!”

On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on Rainbarrow.  From a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as Eustacia had stood on that lonely summit some two years and a half before.  But now it was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early afternoon instead of dull twilight.  Those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of the Barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone.  Round him upon the slopes of the Barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or sitting at their ease.  They listened to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope.  This was the first of a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the Mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted.