ds in Dick's
mind, he decided not to consider of alarming significance.

"A new music greets our ears now," said Miss Fancy, alluding, with the
sharpness that her position as village sharpener demanded, to the
contrast between the rattle of knives and forks and the late notes of the
fiddlers.

"Ay; and I don't know but what 'tis sweeter in tone when you get above
forty," said the tranter; "except, in faith, as regards father there.
Never such a mortal man as he for tunes. They do move his soul; don't
'em, father?"

The eldest Dewy smiled across from his distant chair an assent to
Reuben's remark.

"Spaking of being moved in soul," said Mr. Penny, "I shall never forget
the first time I heard the 'Dead March.' 'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's
funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about
like a vlock of sheep--ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and
the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's
grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another
upon my jawbone. Ah, 'tis a very solemn thing!"

"Well, as to father in the corner there," the tranter said, pointing to
old William, who was in the act of filling his mouth; "he'd starve to
death for music's sake now, as much as when he was a boy-chap of
fifteen."

"Truly, now," said Michael Mail, clearing the corner of his throat in the
manner of a man who meant to be convincing; "there's a friendly tie of
some sort between music and eating." He lifted the cup to his mouth, and
drank himself gradually backwards from a perpendicular position to a
slanting one, during which time his looks performed a circuit from the
wall opposite him to the ceiling overhead. Then clearing the other
corner of his throat: "Once I was a-setting in the little kitchen of the
Dree Mariners at Casterbridge, having a bit of dinner, and a brass band
struck up in the street. Such a beautiful band as that were! I was
setting eating fried liver and lights, I well can mind--ah, I was! and to
save my life, I couldn't help chawing to the tune. Band played six-eight
time; six-eight chaws I, willynilly. Band plays common; common time went
my teeth among the liver and lights as true as a hair. Beautiful 'twere!
Ah, I shall never forget that there band!"

"That's as tuneful a thing as ever I heard of," said grandfather James,
with the absent gaze which accompanies profound criticism.

"I don't like Michael's tuneful