year
afore I went to sea. Whether it was Mary that broke the winder, and me
that took the blame," he continued, slowly pursuing his way--"or whether
it was her that took the blame, and me that broke the winder, I can't
rightly call to mind. And no great wonder neither, if I've forgot such
a thing as that, when I can't even fix it for certain, yet, whether she
used to wear her Hair Bracelet or not, while I was at home."

Communing with himself in this way, he reached the turning that led to
Joanna Grice's cottage.

His thoughts had thus far been straying away idly and uninterruptedly
to the past. They were now recalled abruptly to present emergencies by
certain unexpected appearances which met his eye, the moment he looked
down the lane along which he was walking.

He remembered this place as having struck him by its silence and its
loneliness, on the occasion of his first visit to Dibbledean. He now
observed with some surprise that it was astir with human beings, and
noisy with the clamor of gossiping tongues. All the inhabitants of the
cottages on either side of the road were out in their front gardens.
All the townspeople who ought to have been walking about the principal
streets, seemed to be incomprehensibly congregated in this one narrow
little lane. What were they assembled here to do? What subject was it
that men and women--and even children as well--were all eagerly talking
about?

Without waiting to hear, without questioning anybody, without appearing
to notice that he was stared at (as indeed all strangers are in rural
England), as if he were walking about among a breeched and petticoated
people in the character of a savage with nothing but war paint on him,
Mat steadily and rapidly pursued his way down the lane to Joanna Grice's
cottage. "Time enough," thought he, "to find out what all this means,
when I've got quietly into the house I'm bound for." As he approached
the cottage, he saw, standing at the gate, what looked, to his eyes,
like two coaches--one, very strange in form: both very remarkable in
color. All about the coaches stood solemn-looking gentlemen; and all
about the solemn-looking gentlemen, circled inquisitively and excitably,
the whole vagabond boy-and-girl population of Dibbledean.

Amazed, and even bewildered (though he hardly knew why) by what he saw,
Mat hastened on to the cottage. Just as he arrived at the garden paling,
the door opened, and from the inside of the dwelling there prot