Tess did not go home. She worked through the winter at Flintcomb-Ash, a starve-acre farm on the chalk uplands, hacking swedes out of the frozen ground with a crooked tool. The rain came down, and the wind cut her face, and she was too proud to ask Angel's parents for help. One day she heard a wandering preacher, and the voice was Alec d'Urberville's. He had been converted, he said, but when he saw her face his new faith fell away from him in a week. Then her father died, and the family lost their cottage, and her mother and the children had nowhere to go. Alec came with money and a house. Tess wrote to Angel: O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel? I do not deserve it. No answer came.