‘Can’t understand it,’ said the officer coolly.  ’All I know is that it is not the condemned man.  He’s quite a different character from this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking, and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you’d never mistake as long as you lived.’

‘Why, souls—­’twas the man in the chimney-corner!’

‘Hey—­what?’ said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring particulars from the shepherd in the background.  ’Haven’t you got the man after all?’

‘Well, sir,’ said the constable, ’he’s the man we were in search of, that’s true; and yet he’s not the man we were in search of.  For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand my everyday way; for ‘twas the man in the chimney-corner!’

‘A pretty kettle of fish altogether!’ said the magistrate.  ’You had better start for the other man at once.’

The prisoner now spoke for the first time.  The mention of the man in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do.  ‘Sir,’ he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, ’take no more trouble about me.  The time is come when I may as well speak.  I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother.  Early this afternoon I left home at Shottsford to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge jail to bid him farewell.  I was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way.  When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge.  He was in this chimney-corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he had tried, was the executioner who’d come to take his life, singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who was close by, joining in to save appearances.  My brother looked a glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, “Don’t reveal what you see; my life depends on it.”  I was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried away.’

The narrator’s manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made a great impression on all around.  ’And do you know where your brother is at the present time?’ asked the magistrate.

‘I do not.  I have never seen him since I closed this door.’

‘I can testify to that, for we’ve been between ye ever since,’ said the constable.

‘Where does he think to fly to?—­what is his occupation?’

‘He’s a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.’

’’A said ‘a was a wheelwright—­a wicked rogue,’ said the constable.

‘The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,’ said Shepherd Fennel.  ‘I thought his hands were palish for’s trade.’

’Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor man in custody,’ said the magistrate; ’your business lies with the other, unquestionably.’