"I've had the news-bell ringing in my left ear quite bad enough for a murder, and I've seen a magpie all alone!" "Fanny Robin--Miss Everdene's youngest servant--can't be found.
They've been wanting to lock up the door these two hours, but she isn't come in.

And they don't know what to do about going to bed for fear of locking her out.

They wouldn't be so concerned if she hadn't been noticed in such low spirits these last few days, and Maryann d' think the beginning of a crowner's inquest has happened to the poor girl." "Oh--'tis burned--'tis burned!" came from Joseph Poorgrass's dry lips.
"No--'tis drowned!" said Tall.
"Or 'tis her father's razor!" suggested Billy Smallbury, with a vivid sense of detail.
"Well--Miss Everdene wants to speak to one or two of us before we go to bed.

What with this trouble about the baily, and now about the girl, mis'ess is almost wild." They all hastened up the lane to the farmhouse, excepting the old maltster, whom neither news, fire, rain, nor thunder could draw from his hole.

There, as the others' footsteps died away he sat down again and continued gazing as usual into the furnace with his red, bleared eyes.
From the bedroom window above their heads Bathsheba's head and shoulders, robed in mystic white, were dimly seen extended into the air.
"Are any of my men among you ?" she said anxiously.
"Yes, ma'am, several," said Susan Tall's husband.
"To-morrow morning I wish two or three of you to make inquiries in the villages round if they have seen such a person as Fanny Robin.
Do it quietly; there is no reason for alarm as yet.