CHAPTER XXVI.
scene on the verge of the hay-mead.
"Ah, Miss Everdene!" said the sergeant, lifting his diminutive cap. "Little did I think it was you I was speaking to the other night. And yet, if I had reflected, the 'Queen of the Corn-market' (truth is truth at any hour of the day or night, and I heard you so named in Casterbridge yesterday), the 'Queen of the Corn-market,' I say, could be no other woman. I step across now to beg your forgiveness a thousand times for having been led by my feelings to express myself too strongly for a stranger. To be sure I am no stranger to the place—I am Sergeant Troy, as I told you, and I have assisted your uncle in these fields no end of times when I was a lad. I have been doing the same for you to-day."
"I suppose I must thank you for that, Sergeant Troy," said the "Queen of the Corn-market," in an indifferently grateful tone.
The sergeant looked hurt and sad. "Indeed
