Moreover,
had she known her present power for good or evil over
this man, she would have trembled at her responsibility.
Luckily for her present, unluckily for her future tran-
quillity, her understanding had not yet told her what
Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely; for though it
was possible to form guesses concerning his wild capa-
bilities from old floodmarks faintly visible, he had never
been seen at the high tides which caused them.
Farmer Boldwood came to the stable-door and looked
forth across the level fields. Beyond the first enclosure
was a hedge, and on the other side of this a meadow
belonging to Bathsheba's farm.
It was now early spring -- the time of going to grass
with the sheep, when they have the first feed of the
meadows, before these are laid up for mowing. The
wind, which had been blowing east for several weeks,
had veered to the southward, and the middle of spring
had come abruptly -- almost without a beginning. It
was that period in the vernal quarter when we map
suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The
vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps
to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens
and trackless plantations, where- everything seems -help-
less and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there
are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-
together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of
cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.
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