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the fault is in the way the world is made. Mr. Tasker worships his pigs because they are the gods that help him to get on. The symbol of his religion is not a cross but a tusk. Mr. Tasker fulfils his nature. Nothing can prevent your nature fulfilling itself. Every one must act in his own way. No one knows what he may be brought to do. We can enjoy ourselves here and smoke cigarettes, but at any moment we may do something as ugly as he. It is horrible, it always will be horrible, but it is also divine, because the Son of Man suffers here too. Not iron nails alone, but tusks and teeth are red with his blood.
    Henry had listened to his friend with great eagerness. But it was now time for him to go, and his friend of South Egdon conducted him by a new way to the road round the low garden wall, that shut out a field of corn and harboured under its shade a large kind of nettle. When they came opposite the road they found the wily postman’s gap, and there they said farewell rather after the fashion of schoolboys.

CHAPTER V
COUNTRY MATTERS
    H ENRY TURNBULL wandered homeward, but he did not return through the meads. A desire had come to him to see the sun before it finally set. In order to do this it was necessary to climb the hill behind which the sun was hiding. Henry proceeded very much at his ease to climb a grassy lane that led to the top of the rise. He was contented to be alone, and needed quiet. ‘Perhaps it was a good thing,’ he thought, ‘that he had seen the way the dairyman fed his pigs.’ He did not wish to hide from himself anything human or anything that it was well for him to see, his nature was inquisitive enough to wish to know the worst and the best.
    Once upon the top of the ridge, he was met by the fresh sweetness of the sea wind. The ridge of down overlooked the village of Shelton, his own village, that spread itself out in a desultory fashion between the downs. Upon the other side, the side of the inner world, the outer world being the way to the sea, the scene was grander and stretched with more varied colour. Towards the north were spread out acres of green woods, the remnants of an ancient forest much loved by King John, who came down there, no doubt, to relieve himself of his spleen against the barons. Farther away still there were, all along the skyline , blue hills over which the sun was loitering, very loath to leave the summer day. Occupyingall the middle of the valley was the wild expanse of heathland. The mid region was entirely dominated by the heath, that only allowed a few green fields and fewer ash trees to poach upon its domain. In three or four places the wilderness , with its grey fingers, even crept up and touched the main road to the town.
    While Henry stood there watching the last of the sun a carrier’s van, that had been slowly coming down the main road, stopped beside the white lane that led to the village and was marked by one oak tree. It stopped there because the horse was unable to climb the hill. The small farmer who drove it was forced still to follow the big road in order to return by South Egdon, his customers, however, preferring to walk from this point over the hill to their homes. The van had no cover, and its human burden of country women, and one or two men, was plainly visible from the hill, and there were one or two splashes of red that denoted tiny girl children. Henry could easily see the women stepping out, and once he heard a child’s voice coming very clear out of the vale. Henry was aware that the people who were leaving the cart were bound for the village, and he preferred to stay where he was until they passed by. He knew that they were often met by other relatives, and he wished that evening to have the homeward way to himself. He lay down upon the short grass near a bunch of thyme to wait until the villagers, drawn onby their homes, passed him. He watched the groups slowly appear round the bend of the road that had hid them for a while from his sight. The