The guests one and all started back with suppressed 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.
'O, he's the--!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning the name of an ominous public officer.

'He's come to do it! 'Tis to be at Casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the poor clock- maker we heard of; who used to live away at Shottsford and had no work to do--Timothy Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack among 'em.

He' (and they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly 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 towards that appreciative comrade, who also held out his own.