Yet--what do I
hear?--that's his father's voice!'

'That's the man,' replied the stranger. 'John Lackland was my father,
and I am John Lackland's son. Five-and-thirty years ago, when I was a
boy of eleven, my parents emigrated across the seas, taking me and my
sister with them. Kytes's boy Tony was the one who drove us and our
belongings to Casterbridge on the morning we left; and his was the last
Longpuddle face I saw. We sailed the same week across the ocean, and
there we've been ever since, and there I've left those I went with--all
three.'

'Alive or dead?'

'Dead,' he replied in a low voice. 'And I have come back to the old
place, having nourished a thought--not a definite intention, but just a
thought--that I should like to return here in a year or two, to spend the
remainder of my days.'

'Married man, Mr. Lackland?'

'No.'

'And have the world used 'ee well, sir--or rather John, knowing 'ee as a
child? In these rich new countries that we hear of so much, you've got
rich with the rest?'

'I am not very rich,' Mr. Lackland said. 'Even in new countries, you
know, there are failures. The race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong; and even if it sometimes is, you may be neither
swift nor strong. However, that's enough about me. Now, having answered
your inquiries, you must answer mine; for being in London, I have come
down here entirely to discover what Longpuddle is looking like, and who
are living there. That was why I preferred a seat in your van to hiring
a carriage for driving across.'

'Well, as for Longpuddle, we rub on there much as usual. Old figures
have dropped out o' their frames, so to speak it, and new ones have been
put in their places. You mentioned Tony Kytes as having been the one to
drive your family and your goods to Casterbridge in his father's waggon
when you left. Tony is, I believe, living still, but not at Longpuddle.
He went away and settled at Lewgate, near Mellstock, after his marriage.
Ah, Tony was a sort o' man!'

'His character had hardly come out when I knew him.'

'No. But 'twas well enough, as far as that goes--except as to women. I
shall never forget his courting--never!'

The returned villager waited silently, and the carrier went on:--

TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER

'I shall never forget Tony's face. 'Twas a little, round, firm, tight
face, with a seam here and there left by the smallpox, but not enough to
hurt his look