CHAPTER X .-- SHE ADDS A NOTE LONG AFTER.
Five-years later .-- I have lighted upon this old diary, which it has interested me to look over, containing, as it does, records of the time when life shone more warmly in my eye than it does now.

I am impelled to add one sentence to round off its record of the past.

About a year ago my sister Caroline, after a persistent wooing, accepted the hand and heart of Theophilus Higham, once the blushing young Scripture reader who assisted at the substitute for a marriage I planned, and now the fully- ordained curate of the next parish.

His penitence for the part he played ended in love.

We have all now made atonement for our sins against her: may she be deceived no more.
1887.
THE GRAVE BY THE HANDPOST I never pass through Chalk-Newton without turning to regard the neighbouring upland, at a point where a lane crosses the lone straight highway dividing this from the next parish; a sight which does not fail to recall the event that once happened there; and, though it may seem superfluous, at this date, to disinter more memories of village history, the whispers of that spot may claim to be preserved.
It was on a dark, yet mild and exceptionally dry evening at Christmas- time (according to the testimony of William Dewy of Mellstock, Michael Mail, and others), that the choir of Chalk-Newton--a large parish situate about half-way between the towns of Ivel and Casterbridge, and now a railway station--left their homes just before midnight to repeat their annual harmonies under the windows of the local population.