"Hundred and seventeen." chuckled another old gentleman, given to mental arithmetic and little conversation, who had hitherto sat unobserved in a corner.

"Well, then, that's my age." said the maltster, emphatically.

"O no, father!" said Jacob. "Your turnip-hoeing were in the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and ye don't ought to count-both halves father."

"Chok' it all! I lived through the summers, didn't I? That's my question. I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak of?"

"Sure we shan't." said Gabriel, soothingly.

"Ye be a very old aged person, malter." attested Jan must have a wonderful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he, neighbours?"

"True, true; ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting unanimously.

The maltster, being know pacified, was even generous enough to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were drinking out of was three years older than he.

While the cup was being examined, the end of Gabriel Oak's flute became visible over his smock-frock I seed you blowing into a great flute by now at Casterbridge?"

"You did." said Gabriel, blushing faintly. "I've been in great trouble, neighbours, and was driven to it.

take it careless-like, shepherd and your time will come tired?"

"Neither drum nor trumpet have I heard since Christmas." said Jan Coggan. "Come, raise a tune, Master Oak!"

"That I will." said Gabriel, pulling out his flute and putting it together. "A poor tool, neighbours; but such as I can do ye shall have and welcome."

Oak then struck up "Jockey to the Fair." and played that sparkling melody three times through accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot to beat time.

"He can blow the flute very well -- that 'a can." said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as "Susan Tall's husband." He continued, "I'd as lief as not be able to blow into a flute as well-as that."

"He's a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd." murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence. "We ought to feel full o' thanksgiving that he's not a player of ba'dy songs 'instead of these merry tunes; for 'twould have been just as easy for God to have made the shepherd a loose low man -- a man of iniquity, so to speak it -- as what he is. Yes, for our wives"




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