Midnight Watch and Unexpected Discovery — Far from the Madding Crowd

On the shortest night of the year Gabriel Oak keeps lambing watch on Norcombe Hill, where he has lately become a farmer on credit with two hundred ewes. Hardy lingers on wind, stars, and the solitude of the hill before Gabriel's muffled flute leads us to his wheeled shepherd's hut. He tends the flock by lantern light, warms a newborn lamb at the stove, and falls asleep the instant a town-bred man would still be choosing a side.

Woken by the lamb's bleat, he carries it to its mother and reads the hour from Orion and Cassiopeia. A steady light behind the plantation breaks his sense of being alone on earth. Peering through a hole in a tarred shed, he sees two women tending cows and a weak calf by lantern: an older aunt and a hooded younger woman who yawns, complains about lost hats, and speaks of riding for oatmeal at dawn.

Gabriel cannot see her face until, by one of Hardy's small natural jokes, she drops her cloak and black hair spills over the red jacket he already knows. He recognises the heroine of the yellow waggon and myrtles, prosily as the woman who owed him twopence. They settle the calf beside its mother and leave down the hill. Gabriel returns to his ewes with the girl's face added to the night he must keep alone.