The+Three+Strangers

 = **The Three Strangers** =

**By Thomas Hardy**
Analysis of the Story

Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries may be reckoned the high, grassy, and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd.

Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county town. Yet what of that? Five miles of irregular upland, during the long, inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who "conceive and meditate of pleasant things."

Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of ancient hedge, is usually taken advantage of in the execution of these forlorn dwellings; but in the present case such a kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two foot-paths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good five hundred years. The house was thus exposed to the elements on all sides. But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe. When the shepherd and his family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less inconvenienced by "wuzzes and flames" (hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.

The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level rain-storm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside out like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eaves-droppings flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of the christening of his second girl.

The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling. A glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosey and comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather. The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly polished sheep-crooks without stems, that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying, from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheep fair. The room was lighted by half a dozen candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in sticks that were never used but at high-days, holy days, and family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was in itself significant. Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.

On the hearth, in front of a back brand to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled "like the laughter of the fool."

Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake, the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New, the parish clerk, and John Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the corner cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot where she was. Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions. Absolute confidence in one another's good opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever, which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes of the social scale.

Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's daughter from the valley below, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket—and kept them there till they should be required for ministering to the needs of a coming family. This frugal woman had been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given to the gathering. A sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry. A dancing-party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery. Shepherdess Fennel fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable rage in either. But this scheme was entirely confined to her own gentle mind; the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the most reckless phases of hospitality.

The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill "tweedledee" of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground bass from Elijah New, the parish clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour.

But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen, one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to the musicians as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind. Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no notice, and, fearing she might lose her character of genial hostess if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat down helpless. And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an hour.

While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without. Mrs. Fennel's concern about the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in point of time with the ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the distant town. This personage strode on through the rain without a pause, following the little worn path which, farther on in its course, skirted the shepherd's cottage.

It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects out of doors were readily visible. The sad, wan light revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid of motion when occasion required. In point of fact, he might have been about forty years of age. He appeared tall; but a recruiting sergeant, or other person accustomed to the judging of men's heights by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than five feet eight or nine.

Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in it, as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and, despite the fact that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort that he wore, there was something about him which suggested that he naturally belonged to the black-coated tribes of men. His clothes were of fustian and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises, the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined violence. The outskirts of the little homestead partially broke the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still. The most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown. The traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid shine of the wet slates that covered it. He turned aside, and, finding it empty, stood under the pentroof for shelter.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">While he stood, the boom of the serpent within and the lesser strains of the fiddler reached the spot, as an accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage; for at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water, and a casual rainfall was utilised by turning out as catchers every utensil that the house contained. Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the droughts of summer. But at this season there were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent. This cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie into <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house door. Arrived here, his first act <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">was to kneel down on a large stone beside the row of vessels and to drink a copious draught from one of them. Having quenched his thirst, he rose and <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">lifted his hand to knock, but paused with his eye upon the panel. Since the dark surface of the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that he <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">must be mentally looking through the door, as if he wished to measure thereby all the possibilities that a house of this sort might include, and how <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; height: 353px; width: 528px;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">they might bear upon the question of his entry.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. Not a soul was anywhere visible. The garden path stretched downward from his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden gate, were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in the meads. Beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights through the beating drops, lights that denoted the situation of the county town from which he had appeared to come. The absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to clinch his intentions, and he knocked at the door.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical sound. The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company, which nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock afforded a not unwelcome diversion.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Walk in!" said the shepherd, promptly.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian appeared upon the door-mat. The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest candies, and turned to look at him.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and not unprepossessing as to feature. His hat, which for a moment he did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance round the room. He seemed pleased with the survey, and, baring his shaggy head, said, in a rich, deep voice, "The rain is so heavy, friends, that I ask leave to come in and rest awhile."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"To be sure, stranger," said the shepherd. "And, faith, you've been lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for a glad cause—though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad cause to happen more than once a year."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Nor less," spoke up a woman; "for 'tis best to get your family over and done with as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And what may be this glad cause?" asked the stranger.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A birth and christening," said the shepherd.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too many or too few of such episodes, and, being invited by a gesture to a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced. His manner, which before entering had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless and candid man.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb—hey?" said the engaged man of fifty.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Late it is, master, as you say. I'll take a seat in the chimney-corner if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am, for I am a little moist on the side that was next the rain."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a person quite at home.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Yes, I am rather thin in the vamp," he said, freely, seeing that the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, "and I am not well fitted, either. I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing; but I must find a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"One of hereabouts?" she inquired.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Not quite that—farther up the country."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I thought so. And so am I; and by your tongue you come from my neighbourhood."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"But you would hardly have heard of me," he said, quickly. "My time would be long before yours, ma'am, you see."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of stopping her cross-examination.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy," continued the new-comer; "and that is a little 'baccy, which I am sorry to say I am out of."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I'll fill your pipe," said the shepherd.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A smoker, and no pipe about ye?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I have dropped it somewhere on the road."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying as he did so, "Hand me your 'baccy-box; I'll fill that too, now I am about it."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Lost that too?" said his entertainer, with some surprise.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I am afraid so," said the man, with some confusion "Give it to me in a screw of paper." Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner, and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs as if he wished say no more.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance. The matter being settled, they were about to stand up, when an interruption came in the shape of another knock at the door.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker and began stirring the fire as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim of his existence, and a second time the shepherd said, "Walk in!" In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat. He too was a stranger.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This individual was one of a type radically different from the first. There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. He was several years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks. His face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without power. A few grog-blossoms marked the neighbourhood of his nose. He flung back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade throughout, large, heavy seals, of some metal or other that would take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament. Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned, glazed hat, he said, "I must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted to my skin before I get to Casterbridge."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Make yerself at home, master," said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the least tinge of niggardliness in his composition, but the room was far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were not altogether comfortable at close quarters for the women and girls in their bright-coloured gowns.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat and hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling beams as if he had been specially invited to put it there, advanced, and sat down at the table. This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire, and thus the two strangers were brought into close companionship. They nodded to each other way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first stranger handed his neighbour the large mug—a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away, like a threshold, by the rub of whole genealogies of thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription burned upon its rotund side in yellow letters:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">THERE IS NO FUN UNTIL I CUM.
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The other man, nothing loath, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on and on and on, till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to dispense.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I knew it!" said the toper to the shepherd, with much satisfaction. "When I walked up your garden afore coming in, and saw the hives all of a row, I said to myself, 'Where there's bees there's honey, and where there's honey there's mead.' But mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older days." He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an ominous horizontality.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Glad you enjoy it!" said the shepherd, warmly.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"It is goodish mead," assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for one's cellar at too heavy a price. "It is trouble enough to make—and really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey sells well, and we can make shift with a drop o' small mead and metheglin for common use from the comb washings."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Oh, but you'll never have the heart!" reproachfully cried the stranger in cinder gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down empty. "I love mead, when 't is old like this, as I love to go to church o' Sundays or to relieve the needy any day of the week."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Ha, ha, ha!" said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or maiden honey, four pounds to gallon,—with its due complement of whites of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and processes of working, bottling, and cellaring,—tasted remarkably strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence, presently the stranger in cinder gray at the table, moved by its creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various ways.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, well, as I say," he resumed, "I am going to Casterbridge, and to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by this time; but the rain drove me in to ye, and I'm not sorry for it."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"You don't live in Casterbridge?" said the shepherd.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Not as yet, though I shortly mean to move there."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Going to set up in trade, perhaps?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"No, no," said the shepherd's wife; "it is easy to see that the gentleman is rich and don't want to work at anything."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would accept that definition of himself. He presently rejected it by answering, "Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work, and I must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, hot or wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be done."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Poor man! Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?" replied the shepherd's wife.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"'Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. 'Tis the nature of my trade more than my poverty. But really and truly, I must up and off, or I sha'n't get a lodging in the town."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">However, the speaker did not move, and directly added, "There's time for one more draught of friendship before I go, and I'd perform it at once if the mug were not dry."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Here's a mug o' small," said Mrs. Fennel. "Small, we call it, though, to be sure, 'tis only the first wash o' the combs."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"No," said the stranger, disdainfully; "I won't spoil your first kindness by partaking o' your second.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Certainly not," broke in Fennel. "We don't increase and multiply every day, and I'll fill the mug again." He went away to the dark place under the stairs where the barrel stood. The shepherdess followed him.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Why should you do this?" she said, reproachfully, as soon as they were alone. "He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs call for more o' the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any of us! For my part, I don't like the look o' the man at all."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"But he's in the house, my honey, and 'tis a wet night, and a christening. Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less? There'll be plenty more next bee-burning."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Very well—this time, then," she answered, looking wistfully at the barrel. "But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of, that he should come in and join us like this?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I don't know. I'll ask him again."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder gray was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a discreet distance from him. When he had tossed off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's occupation.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, "Anybody may know my trade —I'm a wheelwright."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A very good trade for these parts," said the shepherd.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And anybody may know mine-if they've the sense to find it out," said the stranger in cinder gray.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"You may generally tell what a man is by his claws," observed the hedge-carpenter, looking at his hands. "My fingers be as full of thorns as an old pincushion is of pins."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The hands of the man in the chimney corner instinctively sought the shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, "True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time: one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself. Thrusting one thumb into the armhole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an extemporising gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the mantelpiece, began:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Oh, my trade it is the rarest one, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Simple shepherds all, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">My trade is a sight to see; <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">For my customers I tie, and take them up on high, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And waft 'em to a far countree."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The room was silent when he had finished the verse, with one exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word, "Chorus!" joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And waft 'em to a far countree."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Oliver Giles, John Pitcher, the dairyman, the parish clerk, the engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked meditatively on the ground; the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger was merely singing an old song from recollection, or composing one there and then for the occasion. All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar's feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said, "Second verse, stranger," and smoked on.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inward, and went on with the next stanza, as requested:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"My tools are but common ones, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Simple shepherds all, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">My tools are no sight to see: <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Are implements enough for me."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that the stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests one and all started back with suppressed exclamations. The young woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded, but, finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her, she sat down trembling.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Oh, he's the—" whispered the people in the background, mentioning the name of an ominous public officer. "He's come to do it. 'T is to be at Cast <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">erbridge gaol to-morrow—the man for sheep-stealing—the poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Anglebury and had no work to do—Timothy Sommers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of Anglebury by the highroad, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's man and every man Jack among 'em. He (and they nodded toward the stranger of the terrible trade) is come from up the country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own county town, and he's got the place here, now our own county man's dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The stranger in cinder gray took no notice of this whispered string of observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any way, he held out his cup toward that appreciative comrade, who also held out his own. They clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the room hanging upon the singer's actions. He parted his lips for the third verse, but at that moment another knock was audible upon the door. This time the knock was faint and hesitating.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation toward the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the welcoming words, "Walk in!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat. He, like those who had preceded him, was a stranger. This time it was a short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent suit of dark clothes.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Can you tell me the way to—" he began; when, gazing round the room to observe the nature of the company among whom he had fallen, his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder gray. It was just at the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third verse:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"To-morrow is my working-day, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Simple shepherds all, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">To-morrow is a working-day for me; <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cup with the singer so heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass voice as before:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And on his soul may God ha' mercy!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway. Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests particularly regarded him. They noticed, to their surprise, that he stood before them the picture of abject terror-his knees trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch, by which he supported himself, rattled audibly; his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the middle of the room. A moment more, and he had turned, closed the door, and fled.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"What a man can it be?" said the shepherd.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew farther and farther from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the prince of darkness himself, till they formed a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and him—

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Circulus, cujus centrum diabolus."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The room was so silent—though there were more than twenty people in it—that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun reverberated through the air, apparently from the direction of the county town.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Be jiggered!" cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"What does that mean?" asked several.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A prisoner escaped from the gaol—that 's what it means."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, "I've often been told that in this county they fire a gun at such times, but I never heard it till now."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I wonder if it is //my// man?" murmured personage in cinder gray.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Surely it is!" said the shepherd, involuntarily. "And surely we've seen him! That little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like a leaf when he seed ye and heard your song."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body," said the dairyman.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone," said Oliver Giles.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And he bolted as if he'd been shot at," said the hedge-carpenter.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"True—his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink, and he bolted as if he'd been shot at," slowly summed up the man in the chimney-corner.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I didn't notice it," remarked the grim songster.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright," faltered one of the women against the wall, "and now't is explained."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly, and their suspicions became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in cinder gray roused himself. "Is there a constable here?" he asked, in thick tones. "If so, let him step forward."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out of the corner, his betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"You are a sworn constable?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I be, sir."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back here. He can't have gone far."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I will, sir, I will—when I've got my staff. I'll home and get it, and come sharp here, and start in a body."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Staff! never mind your staff—the man'll be gone!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"But I can't do nothing without my staff—can I, William, and John, and Charles Jake? No; for there's the king's royal crown a-painted on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I raise en up and hit my prisoner't is made a lawful blow thereby. I wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff—no, not I. If I hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking him up he might take up me!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Now, I'm a king's man myself, and can give you authority enough for this," said the formidable person in cinder gray. "Now then, all of ye, be ready. Have ye any lanterns?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Yes; have ye any lanterns? I demand it," said the constable.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And the rest of you able-bodied—"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Able-bodied men—yes—the rest of ye," said the constable.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Have you some good stout staves and pitchforks—"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Staves and pitchforks—in the name o' the law. And take 'em in yer hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase. The evidence was, indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing that but little argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that, after what they had seen, it would look very much like connivance if they did not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more than a few hundred yards over such uneven country.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting these hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill, away from the town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heartbrokenly in the room overhead. These notes of grief came down through the chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up, one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby; for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed them. Thus in the space of two or three minutes the room on the ground floor was deserted quite.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">But it was not for long. Hardly had the sound of footsteps died away when a man returned round the corner of the house from the direction the pursuers had taken. Peeping in at the door, and seeing nobody there, he entered leisurely. It was the stranger of the chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest. The motive of his return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which he had apparently forgotten to take with him. He also poured out half a cup more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously eating and drinking these as he stood. He had not finished when another figure came in just as quietly—the stranger in cinder gray.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Oh, you here?" said the latter, smiling. "I thought you had gone to help in the capture." And this speaker also revealed the object of his return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of old mead.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"And I thought you had gone," said the other, continuing his skimmer-cake with some effort.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me," said the first, confidentially, "and such a night as it is, too. Besides, 't is the business o' the government to take care of its criminals, not mine."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"True, so it is; and I felt as you did—that were enough without me." <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; height: 384px; width: 512px;">

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows of this wild country."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Nor I, either, between you and me."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"These shepherd people are used to it—simpleminded souls, you know, stirred up to anything a moment. They'll have him ready for me before the morning, and no trouble to me at all."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in the matter."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"True, true. Well, my way is to Casterbridge, and't is as much as my legs will do to take me that far. Going the same way?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"No, I am sorry to' say. I have to get home over there" (he nodded indefinitely to the right), "and I feel as you do—that it is quite enough for my legs to do before bedtime."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after which, shaking hands at the door and wishing each other well, they went their several ways.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the coomb. They had decided on no particular plan of action, and, finding that the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all directions down the hill, and straightway several of the parties fell into the snare set by nature for all misguided midnight ramblers over the lower cretaceous formation. The "lynchets," or flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and, losing their footing on the rubbly steep, they slid sharply downward, the lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their sides till the horn was scorched through.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed, and in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was a grassy, briery, moist channel, affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side. Here they wandered apart, and after an interval closed together again to report progress. At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely oak, the single tree on this part of the upland, probably sown there by a passing bird some hundred years before; and here, standing a little to one side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself, appeared the man they were in quest of, his outline being well defined against the sky beyond. The band noiselessly drew up and faced him.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Your money or your life!" said the constable, sternly, to the still figure.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"No, no," whispered John Pitcher. "'Tisn't our side ought to say that. That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the side of the law."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, well," replied the constable, impatiently, "I must say something, mustn't I? And if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon your mind perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too. Prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the Fath—the crown, I mane!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time, and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage, he strolled slowly toward them. He was, indeed, the little man, the third stranger, but his trepidation had in a great measure gone.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, travellers," he said, "did I hear ye speak to me?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"You did; you've got to come and be our prisoner at once," said the constable. "We arrest ye on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge gaol in a decent, proper manner, to be hung to-morrow morning. Neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on all sides, and marched him back toward the shepherd's cottage.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. The light shining from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them, as they approached the house, that some new events had arisen in their absence. On entering they discovered the shepherd's living-room to be invaded by officers from Casterbridge gaol and a well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Gentlemen," said the constable, "I have brought back your man—not without risk and danger, but every one must do his duty. He is inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid, considering their ignorance of crown work. Men, bring forward your prisoner." And the third stranger was led to the light.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Who is this?" said one of the officials.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"The man," said the constable.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Certainly not," said the other turnkey, and the first corroborated his statement.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"But how can it be otherwise?" asked the constable. "Or why was he so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law?" Here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering the house.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Can't understand it," said the officer, coolly. All I know is that it is not the condemned man. He's quite a different character from this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking, and with a musical bass voice that, if you heard it once, you'd never mistake as long as you lived."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Why, souls, 't was the man in the chimney-corner!"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Hey—what?" said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring particulars from the shepherd in the background. "Haven't you got the man after all?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, sir," said the constable, "he's the man we were in search of, that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand my every-day way; for 't was the man in the chimney-corner."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A pretty kettle of fish altogether!" said the magistrate. "You had better start for the other man at once."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The prisoner now spoke for the first time. The mention of the man in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do. "Sir," he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, "take no more trouble about me. The time is come when I may as well speak. I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother. Early this afternoon I left home at Anglebury to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge gaol to bid him farewell. I was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in this chimney-corner; and, jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing a song about it, and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, 'Don't reveal what you see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried away."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great impression on around. "And do you know where your brother is at the present time?" asked the magistrate.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I do not. I have never seen him since I closed this door."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since," said the constable.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Where does he think to fly to? What is his occupation?"

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"He's a watch- and clock-maker, sir."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"'A said 'a was a wheelwright—a wicked rogue," said the constable.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"The wheels o' clocks and watches he meant, no doubt," said Shepherd Fennel. "I thought his hands were palish for's trade."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in custody," the magistrate; "your business lies with the other unquestionably."

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And so the little man was released offhand; but he looked nothing the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or constable to rase out the written troubles in his brain, for they concerned another, whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself. When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became general and keen—to all appearance, at least. But the intended punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the sympathy of a great many country folk in that district was strongly on the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring under the unprecedented circumstances of the shepherd's party won their admiration. So that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was found. Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured. Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city. At any rate, the gentleman in cinder gray never did his morning's work at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all for business purposes the comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely house on the coomb.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening-party have mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they all had met is a matron in the sear and yellow leaf; but the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**References**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A Field in England Covered in Frost" <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"A Party with Dancing." //Among Those Who Danced Most Continually Were the Two Engaged Couples.// Scanned by Philip V. Allingham. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Constable, John. //A Cottage in a Cornfield//. 1817. National Museum Wales, Cardiff. //Wikimedia Commons//. Web. 22 July 2011. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Hardy, Thomas. "The Three Strangers." //Stories by English Authors: England//. 10th ed. July 2004. //Project Gutenberg//. Web. 25 June 2011. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Smith, Andrew. "A Coombe in Dorset, England." Photograph. //Wikimedia Commons//. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Sept. 2007. Web. 22 July 2011.

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