difference was mainly
superficial; he was to them like the poet of a new school who takes
his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first
to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till
then.

The silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the young
man sang; and even Mrs. Stannidge managed to unstick herself from the
framework of her chair in the bar and get as far as the door-post,
which movement she accomplished by rolling herself round, as a cask
is trundled on the chine by a drayman without losing much of its
perpendicular.

"And are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?" she asked.

"Ah--no!" said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice,
"I'm only passing thirrough! I am on my way to Bristol, and on frae
there to foreign parts."

"We be truly sorry to hear it," said Solomon Longways. "We can ill
afford to lose tuneful wynd-pipes like yours when they fall among us.
And verily, to mak' acquaintance with a man a-come from so far, from the
land o' perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and wild boars and
other dangerous animalcules be as common as blackbirds here-about--why,
'tis a thing we can't do every day; and there's good sound information
for bide-at-homes like we when such a man opens his mouth."

"Nay, but ye mistake my country," said the young man, looking round upon
them with tragic fixity, till his eye lighted up and his cheek kindled
with a sudden enthusiasm to right their errors. "There are not perpetual
snow and wolves at all in it!--except snow in winter, and--well--a
little in summer just sometimes, and a 'gaberlunzie' or two stalking
about here and there, if ye may call them dangerous. Eh, but you should
take a summer jarreny to Edinboro', and Arthur's Seat, and all round
there, and then go on to the lochs, and all the Highland scenery--in May
and June--and you would never say 'tis the land of wolves and perpetual
snow!"

"Of course not--it stands to reason," said Buzzford. "'Tis barren
ignorance that leads to such words. He's a simple home-spun man, that
never was fit for good company--think nothing of him, sir."

"And do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your crock, and
your bit of chiney? or do ye go in bare bones, as I may say?" inquired
Christopher Coney.

"I've sent on my luggage--though it isn't much; for the voyage is long."
Donald's eyes dropped into a remote gaze as he added: "But I said to
mysel