;
When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree,
The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!"

There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more
eloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of a
pipe-stem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of those
gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and irreverent
act. Then the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically started off
for a new spin, and the pathos of Donald's song was temporarily effaced.

"'Twas not amiss--not at all amiss!" muttered Christopher Coney, who was
also present. And removing his pipe a finger's breadth from his lips, he
said aloud, "Draw on with the next verse, young gentleman, please."

"Yes. Let's have it again, stranger," said the glazier, a stout,
bucket-headed man, with a white apron rolled up round his waist. "Folks
don't lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world." And
turning aside, he said in undertones, "Who is the young man?--Scotch,
d'ye say?"

"Yes, straight from the mountains of Scotland, I believe," replied
Coney.

Young Farfrae repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so
pathetic had been heard at the Three Mariners for a considerable time.
The difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense
local feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a
climax, surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut
up their emotions with caustic words.

"Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that!"
continued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying
fall, "My ain countree!" "When you take away from among us the fools
and the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the
slatterns, and such like, there's cust few left to ornament a song with
in Casterbridge, or the country round."

"True," said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table.
"Casterbridge is a old, hoary place o' wickedness, by all account. 'Tis
recorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two hundred
years ago, in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was hanged
on Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent about the
country like butcher's meat; and for my part I can well believe it."

"What did ye come away from yer own country for, young maister, if ye be
so wownded about it?" inquired Christopher Coney,