Page:Far from the Madding Crowd Vol 1.djvu/187

 through the smooth wan coverlit in the twisted and curved shapes of old Venetian glass; and how the footprints of a few birds, which had hopped over the snow whilst it lay in the state of a soft fleece were now frozen to a short permanency. A halfmuffled noise of light wheels interrupted him. Boldwood turned back into the road. It was the mail-cart—a crazy, two-wheeled vehicle, hardly heavy enough to resist a puff of wind. The driver held out a letter. Boldwood seized it and opened it, expecting another anonymous one. So greatly are people's ideas of probability a mere sense that precedent will repeat itself, that they often do not stop to think whether the fact of an event having once occurred is not in many cases the very circumstance which makes its repetition unlikely.

"I don't think it is for you, sir," said the man, when he saw Boldwood's action. "Though there is no name, I think it is for your shepherd."

Boldwood looked then at the address:—



"Oh—what a mistake!—it is not mine. Nor is it for my shepherd. It is for Miss Everdene's. You had better take it on to him—Gabriel Oak—and say I opened it in mistake."