'The most private, secret, plainest wedding that it is possible to have' were Bathsheba's own words, and Oak meditates a full hour on how to do exactly that. It must be a licence. On a dark night he comes away from the surrogate's door in Casterbridge, falls in step with Jan Coggan, and feels he cannot keep the secret from him, since Coggan has been true as steel through all Gabriel's unhappiness. They fear Laban Tall's wife will tell the whole parish within half an hour, so Coggan knocks and spins her a tale about a law-paper and shares in a farm. She is told only that Laban must be at the church-hatch at ten in his best clothes. The vicar is called on without any fuss.
That night Bathsheba tells Liddy to wake her at seven, then wakes at four and rouses Liddy at six, certain her watch has stopped. She says only that Farmer Oak is coming to dine, then whispers the truth, and Liddy's heart goes bumpity-bump. The morning is damp. At twenty minutes to ten Oak goes up the hill, and ten minutes later two umbrellas move through the mist to the church, arm in arm for the first time in their lives. Bathsheba has done her hair as she wore it on Norcombe Hill, and looks to Oak like the girl of his old dream, though she is only three or four-and-twenty. With Tall, Liddy and the parson as witnesses, the deed is done in a remarkably short space of time.
That evening they sit down quietly to tea in her parlour, since Oak has as yet neither money, house nor furniture worth the name. A cannon fires outside, and the old Weatherbury band blows up in the porch with every worm-eaten instrument it owns, which Oak guesses Mark Clark and Jan are behind. They will not stay for supper, though Oak invites them. Coggan and Jacob Smallbury marvel at how naturally Oak says 'my wife', considering how new he is to it, and Bathsheba smiles, for she never laughs readily now. So the story that began on Norcombe Hill ends with her hair done as it was then and Gabriel's arm beneath her own. As the band moves off, Poorgrass sighs, a cheerful man, and says that he wishes Gabriel joy of her, that it might have been worse, and that he feels his thanks accordingly.
