h scarcely an interruption from lateral breezes.

After passing the plantation and reaching Mellstock Cross the white
surface of the lane revealed itself between the dark hedgerows like a
ribbon jagged at the edges; the irregularity being caused by temporary
accumulations of leaves extending from the ditch on either side.

The song (many times interrupted by flitting thoughts which took the
place of several bars, and resumed at a point it would have reached had
its continuity been unbroken) now received a more palpable check, in the
shape of "Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" from the crossing lane to Lower Mellstock, on
the right of the singer who had just emerged from the trees.

"Ho-i-i-i-i-i!" he answered, stopping and looking round, though with no
idea of seeing anything more than imagination pictured.

"Is that thee, young Dick Dewy?" came from the darkness.

"Ay, sure, Michael Mail."

"Then why not stop for fellow-craters--going to thy own father's house
too, as we be, and knowen us so well?"

Dick Dewy faced about and continued his tune in an under-whistle,
implying that the business of his mouth could not be checked at a
moment's notice by the placid emotion of friendship.

Having come more into the open he could now be seen rising against the
sky, his profile appearing on the light background like the portrait of a
gentleman in black cardboard. It assumed the form of a low-crowned hat,
an ordinary-shaped nose, an ordinary chin, an ordinary neck, and ordinary
shoulders. What he consisted of further down was invisible from lack of
sky low enough to picture him on.

Shuffling, halting, irregular footsteps of various kinds were now heard
coming up the hill, and presently there emerged from the shade severally
five men of different ages and gaits, all of them working villagers of
the parish of Mellstock. They, too, had lost their rotundity with the
daylight, and advanced against the sky in flat outlines, which suggested
some processional design on Greek or Etruscan pottery. They represented
the chief portion of Mellstock parish choir.

The first was a bowed and bent man, who carried a fiddle under his arm,
and walked as if engaged in studying some subject connected with the
surface of the road. He was Michael Mail, the man who had hallooed to
Dick.

The next was Mr. Robert Penny, boot- and shoemaker; a little man, who,
though rather round-shouldered, walked as if that fact had not come to
his own knowledge, moving on