Also are present
some of the county yeomanry in white leather breeches and scarlet,
volunteers in scarlet with green facings, and the REVEREND MR.
PALMER, vicar of the parish, leaning against the post of his
garden door, and smoking a clay pipe of preternatural length.
Also PRIVATE CANTLE from Egdon Heath, and SOLOMON LONGWAYS of
Casterbridge. The Durnover band, which includes a clarionet,
{serpent,} oboe, tambourine, cymbals, and drum, is playing "Lord
Wellington's Hornpipe."]

RUSTIC [wiping his face]

Says I, please God I'll lose a quarter to zee he burned! And I left
Stourcastle at dree o'clock to a minute. And if I'd known that I
should be too late to zee the beginning on't, I'd have lost a half
to be a bit sooner.

YEOMAN

Oh, you be soon enough good-now. He's just going to be lighted.

RUSTIC

But shall I zee en die? I wanted to zee if he'd die hard,

YEOMAN

Why, you don't suppose that Boney himself is to be burned here?

RUSTIC

What--not Boney that's to be burned?

A WOMAN

Why, bless the poor man, no! This is only a mommet they've made of
him, that's got neither chine nor chitlings. His innerds be only a
lock of straw from Bridle's barton.

LONGWAYS

He's made, neighbour, of a' old cast jacket and breeches from our
barracks here. Likeways Grammer Pawle gave us Cap'n Meggs's old
Zunday shirt that she'd saved for tinder-box linnit; and Keeper
Tricksey of Mellstock emptied his powder-horn into a barm-bladder,
to make his heart wi'.

RUSTIC [vehemently]

Then there's no honesty left in Wessex folk nowadays at all! "Boney's
going to be burned on Durnover Green to-night,"-- that was what I
thought, to be sure I did, that he'd been catched sailing from his
islant and landed at Budmouth and brought to Casterbridge Jail, the
natural retreat of malefactors!--False deceivers--making me lose a
quarter who can ill afford it; and all for nothing!

LONGWAYS

'Tisn't a mo'sel o' good for thee to cry out against Wessex folk, when
'twas all thy own stunpoll ignorance.

[The VICAR OF DURNOVER removes his pipe and spits perpendicularly.]

VICAR

My dear misguided man, you don't imagine that we should be so inhuman
in this Christian country as to burn a fellow creature alive?

RUSTIC

Faith, I won't say I didn't! Durnover folk have never had the
highest