nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating
circumstances.

"I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree
Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was
half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the
clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get
a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and
then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and
just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming
along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I
stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says,
for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he
was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup
for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if
we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo
tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a
wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think
me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks
the right language."

"The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about
as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on
a key-bugle."

"Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I
should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to
know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster."

"Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation,
"you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says
ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other
noise."

The rest of the party being Loamsnire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh
strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question,
which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in
the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest
conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and
that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never
went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and
looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces."

It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband
on their way from church concerning this problematic stra