She was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet him on the top.  At last she inquired how they were going to travel.

He explained that he proposed to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other side of Casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-cut into the Ivell Road, and onward to that town.  The Bristol railway was open to Ivell.

This plan they followed, and walked briskly through the dull gloom till they neared Casterbridge, which place they avoided by turning to the right at the Roman Amphitheatre and bearing round to Durnover Cross.  Thence the way was solitary and open across the moor to the hill whereon the Ivell fly awaited them.

‘I have noticed for some time,’ she said, ’a lurid glare over the Durnover end of the town.  It seems to come from somewhere about Mixen Lane.’

‘The lamps,’ he suggested.

’There’s not a lamp as big as a rushlight in the whole lane.  It is where the cholera is worst.’

By Standfast Corner, a little beyond the Cross, they suddenly obtained an end view of the lane.  Large bonfires were burning in the middle of the way, with a view to purifying the air; and from the wretched tenements with which the lane was lined in those days persons were bringing out bedding and clothing.  Some was thrown into the fires, the rest placed in wheel-barrows and wheeled into the moor directly in the track of the fugitives.

They followed on, and came up to where a vast copper was set in the open air.  Here the linen was boiled and disinfected.  By the light of the lanterns Laura discovered that her husband was standing by the copper, and that it was he who unloaded the barrow and immersed its contents.  The night was so calm and muggy that the conversation by the copper reached her ears.

‘Are there many more loads to-night?’

‘There’s the clothes o’ they that died this afternoon, sir.  But that might bide till to-morrow, for you must be tired out.’

’We’ll do it at once, for I can’t ask anybody else to undertake it.  Overturn that load on the grass and fetch the rest.’

The man did so and went off with the barrow.  Maumbry paused for a moment to wipe his face, and resumed his homely drudgery amid this squalid and reeking scene, pressing down and stirring the contents of the copper with what looked like an old rolling-pin.  The steam therefrom, laden with death, travelled in a low trail across the meadow.

Laura spoke suddenly:  ’I won’t go to-night after all.  He is so tired, and I must help him.  I didn’t know things were so bad as this!’

Vannicock’s arm dropped from her waist, where it had been resting as they walked.  ‘Will you leave?’ she asked.

‘I will if you say I must.  But I’d rather help too.’  There was no expostulation in his tone.

Laura had gone forward.  ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I am come to help!’