The silence which followed seemed to imply a doubt of the truth of the new-comer’s assertion. ‘I was speaking of Upper Longpuddle more particular,’ continued the carrier hardily, ‘and I think I know most faces of that valley.’ ‘I was born at Longpuddle, and nursed at Longpuddle, and my father and grandfather before me,’ said the passenger quietly. ‘Why, to be sure,’ said the aged groceress in the background, ‘it isn’t John Lackland’s son—never—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 Longpuddle 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 as a 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 failures. 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 must answer mine; for being in London, I have come down here 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.’ ‘Well, as for Longpuddle, we rub on there much as usual. Old figures have dropped out o’ their frames, so to speak it, and new ones have been put in their places. You mentioned Tony Kytes as having been the one to drive your family and your goods to Casterbridge in his father’s waggon when you left. Tony is, I believe, living still, but not at Longpuddle. He went away and settled at Lewgate, near Mellstock, after his marriage. Ah, Tony was a sort o’ man!’ ‘His character had hardly come out when I knew him.’ ‘No. But ’twas well enough, as far as that goes—except as to women. I shall never forget his courting—never!’ The returned villager waited silently, and the carrier went on:— TONY KYTES, THE ARCH-DECEIVER