The only copies he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphin

editions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But,

bad for idle schoolboys, it did so happen that they were passably

good for him. The hampered and lonely itinerant conscientiously

covered up the marginal readings, and used them merely on points of

construction, as he would have used a comrade or tutor who should

have happened to be passing by. And though Jude may have had little

chance of becoming a scholar by these rough and ready means, he was

in the way of getting into the groove he wished to follow.

While he was busied with these ancient pages, which had already been

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thumbed by hands possibly in the grave, digging out the thoughts

of these minds so remote yet so near, the bony old horse pursued

his rounds, and Jude would be aroused from the woes of Dido by the

stoppage of his cart and the voice of some old woman crying, "Two

to-day, baker, and I return this stale one."

He was frequently met in the lanes by pedestrians and others without

his seeing them, and by degrees the people of the neighbourhood

began to talk about his method of combining work and play (such they

considered his reading to be), which, though probably convenient

enough to himself, was not altogether a safe proceeding for other

travellers along the same roads. There were murmurs. Then a private

resident of an adjoining place informed the local policeman that the

baker's boy should not be allowed to read while driving, and insisted

that it was the constable's duty to catch him in the act, and

take him to the police court at Alfredston, and get him fined for

dangerous practices on the highway. The policeman thereupon lay in

wait for Jude, and one day accosted him and cautioned him.

As Jude had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to heat the

oven, and mix and set in the bread that he distributed later in the

day, he was obliged to go to bed at night immediately after laying

the sponge; so that if he could not read his classics on the highways

he could hardly study at all. The only thing to be done was,

therefore, to keep a sharp eye ahead and around him as well as he

could in the circumstances, and slip away his books as soon as

anybody loomed in the distance, the policeman in particular. To do

that official justice, he did not put himself much in the way of

Jude's bread-cart, considering that in such a lonely district the

chief danger was to Jude himself, and often on seeing the white tilt

over the hedges he would move in another direction.




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