One night at the end of August, with Bathsheba's married life still new and the weather dry and sultry, Gabriel stands in the stockyard reading the sky. Two layers of cloud cross at right angles, the moon looks metallic, the sheep have come home head to tail, the rooks are confused, and the horses move with caution. Thunder is near, and after it a long rain. Eight ricks stand naked in the yard, holding half the farm's produce. Gabriel works out the sum: five wheat ricks and three of barley, seven hundred and fifty pounds. Hardy says that man is a palimpsest, with one writing on the surface and another beneath. The surface says the corn must be saved. Underneath it says, "I will help to my last effort the woman I have loved so dearly."
In the barn, Troy, who has bought his discharge, rules the harvest supper and dance. The fiddlers play The Soldier's Joy, because a gallant soldier has married into the farm. Gabriel sends a message that heavy rain is coming and the ricks need covering. The answer comes back that Mr Troy says it will not rain and cannot stop for such fidgets. Gabriel, a candle beside gas, nearly goes home, but stops at the door in time to hear Troy announce a wedding feast and order brandy, a treble-strong goblet for every guest. Bathsheba begs him not to. He sends the women home, and tells any man who shows the white feather to look elsewhere for a winter's work. She leaves, with the women and children. Gabriel stays a little, then goes.
A toad crosses his path. A slug has dragged its streak across his table. Two spiders drop from the ceiling, and the sheep stand huddled with their tails to the storm. Every creature agrees with him, and Troy is wrong. He goes back to the barn for help and finds the candles burnt to their sockets and every able man asleep. Coggan snores, Poorgrass lies curled like a hedgehog, and from an overturned jug a thin stream drips down Mark Clark's neck. Hardy is fair to the men: they were used only to cider. Gabriel puts out the lights, wakes Susan Tall for the granary key, and drags four waterproof cloths across the yard, covering two wheat ricks. He thatches the third by sloping the sheaves. Then he begins on the barley, with the moon gone and a slow breeze like a death, and the only sound in the yard is the dull thud of the beetle driving in the spars.
Coming Up in Chapter 37
A light flaps across the sky as if reflected from phosphorescent wings, and the first rumble of thunder follows. Gabriel, working on the barley stack, trails a chain from his iron rod to the ground for safety. Then a green flash shows him a dark figure in the open ground ahead, and he calls out into the darkness.
