than I have for Botany Bay!"

"Come," said Longways; "let the young man draw onward with his ballet,
or we shall be here all night."

"That's all of it," said the singer apologetically.

"Soul of my body, then we'll have another!" said the general dealer.

"Can you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?" inquired a fat woman with
a figured purple apron, the waiststring of which was overhung so far by
her sides as to be invisible.

"Let him breathe--let him breathe, Mother Cuxsom. He hain't got his
second wind yet," said the master glazier.

"Oh yes, but I have!" exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered
"O Nannie" with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like
sentiment, winding up at their earnest request with "Auld Lang Syne."

By this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the
Three Mariners' inmates, including even old Coney. Notwithstanding an
occasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the
moment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone
of his mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had
sentiment--Casterbridge had romance; but this stranger's sentiment was
of differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the 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