The Same Night: The Fir Plantation
- Before going to bed, Bathsheba decides to walk around the house and the grounds to make sure everything is as it should be.
- She walks along a dark path and bumps into a man. She tries to walk away, but something is holding her back. Her dress has gotten caught on the spur of the man's boot. It takes them a moment to get untangled.
- The man uses her lantern to get them untangled, and then turns it on her face. He tells her that she has a pretty face. Bathsheba accuses him of untangling her skirts in order to keep her next to him for longer, but he denies it.
- Bathsheba just wants to get away from him. She's blushing from all his compliments and doesn't want to stand so close to a strange man in the middle of the night.
- She notices that the young man is wearing a soldier's uniform.
- Bathsheba finally runs home and asks her servant Liddy if she knows of a young soldier staying in the village. Liddy says that it might be a man named Sergeant Troy.
- Yup, that's the same Sergeant Troy who was supposed to marry Fanny Robin. We have no clue where Fanny is, and the only people in the world who know about her engagement to Troy are Boldwood and Oak.
- Bathsheba asks Liddy what kind of reputation Troy has, and Liddy answer that he's considered a lady-killer. But she also says that he comes from noble blood. His daddy was an earl.
- The chapter ends with Bathsheba thinking about Sergeant Troy and how he complimented her on her good looks: something the Boldwood has never done.