Not a footstep
or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead
silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from
a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart
rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny. The fog had by
this time saturated the trees, and this was the first
dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The
hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully
of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another
drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual
tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the
road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded
with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-
red leaves of the beeches were hung with similar drops,
like diamonds on auburn hair.
At the roadside hamlet called Roy-Town, just beyond
this wood, was the old inn Buck's Head. It was about
a mile and a half from Weatherbury, and in the meridian
times of stage-coach travelling had been the place
where many coaches changed and kept their relays
of horses. All the old stabling was now pulled down,
and little remained besides the habitable inn itself,
which, standing a little way back from the road, sig-
nified its existence to people far up and down the
highway by a sign hanging from the horizontal bough
of an elm on the opposite side of the way.
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