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As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the neighbourhood of Trantridge.

`Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and other places?'

asked his son.`That curiously historic worn-out family with its ghostly legend of the coach-and-four?'

`O no.The original d'Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty or eighty years ago - at least, I believe so.This seems to be a new family which has taken the flame; for the credit of the former knightly line I hope they are spurious, I'm sure.But it is odd to hear you express interest in old families.I thought you set less store by them even than I.'

`You misapprehend me, father; you often do,' said Angel with a little impatience.`Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their being old.Some of the wise even among themselves "exclaim against their own succession", as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached to them.'

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called d'Urberville the young man developed the most culpable passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have made him know better.A knowledge of his career having come to the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part of the country preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to the delinquent on his spiritual state.Though he was a stranger, occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St Luke: `Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!' The young man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

`Dear father,' he said sadly, `I wish you would not expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!'

`Pain?' said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of self-abnegation.

`The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor, foolish young man.

Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or even his blows)"Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and as the off scouring of all things unto this day." Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at this present hour.'

`Not blows, father? He did not proceed to blows?'

`No, he did not.Though I have borne blows from men in a mad state of intoxication.'

`No!'

`A dozen times, my boy.What then? I have saved them from the guilt of murdering their own flesh and blood thereby; and they have lived to thank me, and praise God.'

`May this young man do the same!' said Angel fervently.`But I fear otherwise, from what you say.'

`We'll hope, nevertheless,' said Mr Clare.`And I continue to pray for him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never meet again.

But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in his heart as a good seed some day.'

Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child; and though the younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma he revered his practice, and recognized the hero under the pietist.Perhaps he revered his father's practice even more now than ever, seeing that, in the question of making Tessy his wife, his father had not once thought of inquiring whether she were well provided or penniless.The same unworldliness was what had necessitated Angel's getting a living as a farmer, and would probably keep his brothers in the position of poor parsons for the term of their activities; yet Angel admired it none the less.Indeed, despite his own heterodoxy, Angel often felt that be was nearer to his father on the human side than was either of his brethren.

Chapter 27 An up-hill and down-dale ride of twenty-odd miles through a garish mid-day atmosphere brought him in the afternoon to a detached knoll a mile or two west of Talbothays, whence he again looked into that green trough of sappiness and humidity, the valley of the Var or Froom.Immediately he began to descend from the upland to the fat alluvial soil below, the atmosphere grew heavier;the languid perfume of the summer fruits, the mists, the hay, the flowers, formed therein a vast pool of odour which at this hour seemed to make the animals, the very bees and butterflies, drowsy.Clare was now so familiar with the spot that he knew the individual cows by their names when, a long distance off, he saw them dotted about the meads.It was with a sense of luxury that he recognized his power of viewing life here from its inner side, in a way that had been quite foreign to him in his student-days;and, much as he loved his parents, he could not help being aware that to come here, as now, after an experience of home-life, affected him like throwing off splints and bandages; even the one customary curb on the humours of English rural societies being absent in this place, Talbothays having no resident landlord.

Not a human being was out of doors at the dairy.The denizens were all enjoying the usual afternoon nap of an hour or so which the exceedingly early hours kept in summer-time rendered a necessity.At the door the wood-hooped pails, sodden and bleached by infinite scrubbings, hung like hats on a stand upon the forked and peeled limb of an oak fixed there for that purpose;all of them ready and dry for the evening milking.Angel entered, and went through the silent passages of the house to the back quarters, where he listened for a moment.Sustained snores came from the cart-house, where some of the men were lying down; the grunt and squeal of sweltering pigs arose from the still further distance.The large-leaved rhubarb and cabbage plants slept too, their broad limp surfaces hanging in the sun like half-closed umbrellas.