ommenced, as one
opening a new vein of the same mine of interest.

Wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced
through the partition at the prisoners.

"He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit his old
acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there; a good man
enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?"

"'A was."

"And neighbour Yeobright would take Andrey's place for some part of
the service, to let Andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would
naturally do."

"As any friend would," said Grandfer Cantle, the other listeners
expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads.

"No sooner was Andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour
Yeobright's wind had got inside Andrey's clarinet than everyone in
church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among 'em. All heads
would turn, and they'd say, 'Ah, I thought 'twas he!' One Sunday I can
well mind--a bass-viol day that time, and Yeobright had brought his
own. 'Twas the Hundred-and-thirty-third to 'Lydia'; and when they'd
come to 'Ran down his beard and o'er his robes its costly moisture
shed,' neighbour Yeobright, who had just warmed to his work, drove his
bow into them strings that glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed
the bass-viol into two pieces. Every winder in church rattled as if
'twere a thunderstorm. Old Pa'son Williams lifted his hands in his
great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and
seemed to say to hisself, 'O for such a man in our parish!' But not a
soul in Kingsbere could hold a candle to Yeobright."

"Was it quite safe when the winder shook?" Christian inquired.

He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration
of the performance described. As with Farinelli's singing before the
princesses, Sheridan's renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples,
the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world
invested the deceased Mr. Yeobright's _tour de force_ on that
memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative
criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down.

"He was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of
life," said Humphrey.

"Ah, well: he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. At
that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill
Fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid,
hardly husband-hi