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it can’t be—he who went to foreign parts five-and-thirty years ago with his wife and family? Yet—what do I hear ?—that’s his father’s voice !”

“That’s the man,” replied the stranger. “John Lackland was my father, and I am John Lackland’s son. Five-and-thirty years ago, when I was a boy of eleven, my parents emigrated across the seas, taking me and my sister with them. Kytes’s boy Tony was the one who drove us and our belongings to Casterbridge on the morning we left; and his was the last Longpnddle face I saw. We sailed the same week across the ocean, and there we've been ever since, and there I’ve left those I went with—all three.”

"Alive or dead ?”

“Dead,” he replied in a low voice. “And I have come back to the old place, having nourished a thought —not a definite intention, but just a thought—that I should like to return here in a year or two, to spend the remainder of my days.”

“ Married man, Mr. Lackland ?”

"No.”

“ And have the world used ‘ee well, sir—or rather John, knowing ’ee asa child? In these rich new countries that we hear of so much, you've got rich with the rest ?”

“I am not very rich,” Mr, Lackland said. “Even in new countries, you know, there are failores, The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and even if it sometimes is, you may be neither swift nor strong. However, that’s enough about me, Now, having answered your inquiries, you muet answer mine; for, being in London, I have come down bere entirely to discover what Longpuddle is looking like, and who are living there. That was why I preferred a seat in your van to hiring a carriage for driving across,”