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 judgment sometimes. I thought you might perhaps know something of it all the while.’

‘Well, I have heard once or twice, ’tis true, that my family had seen better days afore they came to Blackmoor. But I took no notice o’t, thinking it to mean that we had once kept two horses where we now keep only one. I’ve got a wold silver spoon, and a wold graven seal at home, too; but, Lord, what’s a graven seal? And to think that I and these noble D’Urbervilles was one flesh all the time. ’Twas said that my gr’t-grandfer had secrets, and didn’t care to talk of where he came from And where do we raise our smoke, now, parson, if I may make so bold; I mean, where do we D’Urbervilles live?’

‘You don’t live anywhere. You are extinct—as a county family.’

‘That’s bad.’

‘Yes—what the mendacious family chronicles call extinct in the male line—that is, gone down—gone under.’

‘Then where do we lie?’

‘At Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill: rows and rows of you in your vaults, with your effigies under Purbeck-marble canopies.’