"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, from the background,
with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject. "Faith, it
wasn't worth your while on our account, for as Maister Billy Wills says,
we be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest sometimes, what
with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and Goda'mighty sending
his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em with. We don't
think about flowers and fair faces, not we--except in the shape o'
cauliflowers and pigs' chaps."

"But, no!" said Donald Farfrae, gazing round into their faces with
earnest concern; "the best of ye hardly honest--not that surely? None of
ye has been stealing what didn't belong to him?"

"Lord! no, no!" said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. "That's only his
random way o' speaking. 'A was always such a man of underthoughts." (And
reprovingly towards Christopher): "Don't ye be so over-familiar with a
gentleman that ye know nothing of--and that's travelled a'most from the
North Pole."

Christopher Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy,
he mumbled his feelings to himself: "Be dazed, if I loved my country
half as well as the young feller do, I'd live by claning my neighbour's
pigsties afore I'd go away! For my part I've no more love for my country