enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise
for one's cellar at too heavy a price. "It is trouble enough to
make--and really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey
sells well, and we can make shift with a drop o' small mead and
metheglin for common use from the comb washings."

"Oh, but you'll never have the heart!" reproachfully cried the
stranger in cinder gray, after taking up the mug a third time and
setting it down empty. "I love mead, when 't is old like this, as
I love to go to church o' Sundays or to relieve the needy any day
of the week."

"Ha, ha, ha!" said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of
the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would
not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.

Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
maiden honey, four pounds to gallon,--with its due complement of
whites of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and
processes of working, bottling, and cellaring,--tasted remarkably
strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence,
presently the stranger in cinder gray at the table, moved by its
creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in
his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various
ways.

"Well, well, as I say," he resumed, "I am going to Casterbridge,
and to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by
this time; but the rain drove me in to ye, and I'm not sorry for
it."