In lonely
districts night is a protection rather than a danger to a noiseless
pedestrian, and knowing this, Tess pursued the nearest course along
by-lanes that she would almost have feared in the day-time; but
marauders were wanting now, and spectral fears were driven out of
her mind by thoughts of her mother. Thus she proceeded mile after
mile, ascending and descending till she came to Bulbarrow, and about
midnight looked from that height into the abyss of chaotic shade
which was all that revealed itself of the vale on whose further side
she was born. Having already traversed about five miles on the
upland, she had now some ten or eleven in the lowland before her
journey would be finished. 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. Having once been forest, at this shadowy time it
seemed to assert something of its old character, the far and the near
being blended, and every tree and tall hedge making the most of its
presence.
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