the village, together with other idlers and pedestrians, gathered
round the spot, and appeared inclined to negotiate for a partner.

Among these on-lookers were three young men of a superior class,
carrying small knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and stout
sticks in their hands. Their general likeness to each other, and
their consecutive ages, would almost have suggested that they might
be, what in fact they were, brothers. The eldest wore the white tie,
high waistcoat, and thin-brimmed hat of the regulation curate; the
second was the normal undergraduate; the appearance of the third and
youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there
was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying
that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional
groove. That he was a desultory tentative student of something and
everything might only have been predicted of him.

These three brethren told casual acquaintance that they were spending
their Whitsun holidays in a walking tour through the Vale of
Blackmoor, their course being south-westerly from the town of Shaston
on the north-east.

They leant over the gate by the highway, and inquired as to the
meaning of the dance and the white-frocked maids. The two elder of
the brothers were plainly not intending to linger more than a moment,
but the spectacle of a bevy of girls dancing without male partners
seemed to amuse the third, and make him in no hurry to move on. He
unstrapped his knapsack, put it, with his stick, on the hedge-bank,
and opened the gate.

"What are you going to do, Angel?" asked the eldest.