Chapter 8 - Page 2

them, nor pushed the mug to their neighbours. The singer
himself grew emotional, till she could imagine a tear in his
eye as the words went on:--

"It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain would I be,
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!
There's an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain,
As I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again;
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