Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout 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 an 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.  But no sooner did William stop his playing and turn to get over hedge than the bull would stop his smiling and lower his horns towards the seat of William’s breeches.  Well, William had to turn about and play on, willy-nilly; and ’twas only three o’clock in the world, and ’a knowed that nobody would come that way for hours, and he so leery and tired that ’a didn’t know what to do.  When he had scraped till about four o’clock he felt that he verily would have to give over soon, and he said to himself, ’There’s only this last tune between me and eternal welfare!  Heaven save me, or I’m a done man.’  Well, then he called to mind how he’d seen the cattle kneel o’ Christmas Eves in the dead o’ night.  It was not Christmas Eve then, but it came into his head to play