 as an enticement to the
cows when they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of
milkers at this request burst into melody - in purely business-like tones, it is
true, and with no great spontaneity; the result, according to their own belief,
being a decided improvement during the song's continuance. When they had gone
through fourteen or fifteen verses of a cheerful ballad about a murderer who was
afraid to go to bed in the dark because he saw certain brimstone flames around
him, one of the male milkers said -
    »I wish singing on the stoop didn't use up so much of a man's wind! You
should get your harp, sir; not but what a fiddle is best.«
    Tess, who had given ear to this, thought the words were addressed to the
dairyman, but she was wrong. A reply, in the shape of »Why?« came as it were out
of the belly of a dun cow in the stalls; it had been spoken by a milker behind
the animal, whom she had not hitherto perceived.
    »Oh yes; there's nothing like a fiddle,« said the dairyman. »Though I do
think that bulls are more moved by a tune than cows - at least that's my
experience. Once there was a old aged man over at Mellstock - William Dewy by
name - one of the family that used to do a good deal of business as tranters
over there, Jonathan, do ye mind? - I knowed the man by sight as well as I know
my own brother, in a manner of speaking. Well, this man was a coming home-along
from a wedding where he had been playing his fiddle, one fine moonlight night,
and for shortness« sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a field lying that
way, where a bull was out to grass. The bull seed William, and took after him,
horns aground, begad; and though William runned his best, and hadn't much drink
in him (considering 'twas a wedding, and the folks well off), he found he'd
never reach the fence and get over in time to save himself. Well, as a last
thought, he pulled out his fiddle as he runned, and struck up a jig, turning to
the bull, and backing towards the corner. The bull softened down, and stood
still, looking hard at William Dewy, who fiddled on and on; till a sort of a
smile stole over the bull's face.
