"My tools are but common ones,
Simple shepherds all,
My tools are no sight to see:
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me."

Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that
the stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests
one and all started back with surpressed exclamations. The young
woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have
proceeded, but, finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her,
she sat down trembling.

"Oh, he's the--" whispered the people in the background, mentioning
the name of an ominous public officer. "He's come to do it. 'T is
to be at Casterbridge gaol to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the
poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Anglebury and
had no work to do--Timothy Sommers, whose family were a-starving,
and so he went out of Anglebury by the highroad, and took a sheep
in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the
farmer's man and every man Jack among 'em. He" (and they nodded
toward the stranger of the terrible trade) "is come from up the
country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own county
town, and he's got the place here, now our own county man's dead;
he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall."

The stranger in cinder gray took no notice of this whispered string
of observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend
in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality
in any way, he held out his cup toward that appreciative comrade,