The raffle at the inn is an annual local event staged by a "packman" or peddler. Christian, the epitome of superstition among the heath folk, wins the "gown-piece," though as he says earlier no woman will have him. At first, he thinks the event is the devil's own work; but having won, Christian is fascinated by the power of the dice, so fascinated that he thinks he is lucky. He is then willing to forget his fears and gamble with Wildeve later on. As elsewhere, Christian is shown to be not different from the other heath dwellers but only an exaggerated version of them.
The scene of the desperate gambling with Wildeve, Christian, and then Venn is an appropriate and powerful symbol in the novel. Several descriptions make its symbolic use clear. Hardy says of Christian and Wildeve: "Both men became so absorbed in the game that they took no heed of anything but the pigmy objects immediately beneath their eyes; the flat stone, the open lantern, the dice, and the few illuminated fern leaves which lay under the light, were the whole world to them." Later, Hardy says of Wildeve and Venn, using a rather commonplace analogy: "But neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyes being concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was an arena vast and important as a battlefield." Great stress is placed on the flat stone; that it is meant to symbolize the world is obvious. They play at dice, but what game they play and exactly what the stakes are they only half know.
Hardy says of man's world in relation to the universe: "Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which [Wildeve and Venn] sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players." In short, the actions of men scarcely ruffle the surface of the great world around them. This idea is consonant with the several times Hardy shows Clym aware of his insignificance in the universe.
