Broadcast: Oct. 3-Nov. 7, 1971. Last of Hardy's novels. The story of a young stonemason who fails to get into Oxford and is seduced by a farm girl who marries and abandons him. When he is at last free to marry his adored cousin, she has tired of waiting for him and has married a schoolmaster. They are at last united in a celibate marriage but his spooky first child (by the farm girl) hangs himself and their two children.
