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And a aged woman of ninety that use to live nigh here, but is dead and gone long ago, told me that a family of some such name as yours in Blackmoor Vale came originally from these parts, and that 'twere a old ancient race that had all but perished off the earth though the new generations didn't know it. But, Lord, I took no notice of the old woman's ramblings, not I."

"Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see at What conflux issuing forth or entering in; Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces Hasting, or on return in robes of state; Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power; Legions or cohorts, turns of horse and wings; Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotic isle: and, more to west, The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea; From India and the Golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane, Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west, Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north, Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."

The Founders of the College placed their first building on the crest of a smallish plateau which commands a view of the Blackmoor Valley.

After again leaving Marlott, her home, she had got through the spring and summer without any great stress upon her physical powers, the time being mainly spent in rendering light irregular service at dairy-work near Port-Bredy to the west of the Blackmoor Valley, equally remote from her native place and from Talbothays. She preferred this to living on his allowance.

Three days later, in the evening, when the sun was going down in splendour over the lowlands of Blackmoor, and making the Shaston windows like tongues of fire to the eyes of the rustics in that vale, the sick man fancied that he heard somebody come to the house, and a few minutes after there was a tap at the bedroom door.

The winding road downwards became just visible to her under the wan starlight as she followed it, and soon she paced a soil so contrasting with that above it that the difference was perceptible to the tread and to the smell. It was the heavy clay land of Blackmoor Vale, and a part of the Vale to which turnpike-roads had never penetrated. Superstitions linger longest on these heavy soils.

God's NOT in his heaven: All's WRONG with the world! When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still. As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor. Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents?

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line.

They had a low and unassuming aspect from this upland, though as approached on the other side from Blackmoor in her childhood they were as lofty bastions against the sky. Southerly, at many miles' distance, and over the hills and ridges coastward, she could discern a surface like polished steel: it was the English Channel at a point far out towards France.

The secret of Blackmoor was best discovered from the heights around; to read aright the valley before her it was necessary to descend into its midst. When Tess had accomplished this feat she found herself to be standing on a carpeted level, which stretched to the east and west as far as the eye could reach.