Mixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages.  It was the hiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and trouble of every kind.  Farm-labourers and other peasants, who combined a little poaching with their farming, and a little brawling and bibbing with their poaching, found themselves sooner or later in Mixen Lane.  Rural mechanics too idle to mechanize, rural servants too rebellious to serve, drifted or were forced into Mixen Lane.

The lane and its surrounding thicket of thatched cottages stretched out like a spit into the moist and misty lowland.  Much that was sad, much that was low, some things that were baneful, could be seen in Mixen Lane.  Vice ran freely in and out certain of the doors in the neighbourhood; recklessness dwelt under the roof with the crooked chimney; shame in some bow-windows; theft (in times of privation) in the thatched and mud-walled houses by the sallows.  Even slaughter had not been altogether unknown here.  In a block of cottages up an alley there might have been erected an altar to disease in years gone by.  Such was Mixen Lane in the times when Henchard and Farfrae were Mayors.

Yet this mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant lay close to the open country; not a hundred yards from a row of noble elms, and commanding a view across the moor of airy uplands and corn-fields, and mansions of the great.  A brook divided the moor from the tenements, and to outward view there was no way across it—­no way to the houses but round about by the road.  But under every householder’s stairs there was kept a mysterious plank nine inches wide; which plank was a secret bridge.

If you, as one of those refugee householders, came in from business after dark—­and this was the business time here—­you stealthily crossed the moor, approached the border of the aforesaid brook, and whistled opposite the house to which you belonged.  A shape thereupon made its appearance on the other side bearing the bridge on end against the sky; it was lowered; you crossed, and a hand helped you to land yourself, together with the pheasants and hares gathered from neighbouring manors.  You sold them slily the next morning, and the day after you stood before the magistrates with the eyes of all your sympathizing neighbours concentrated on your back.  You disappeared for a time; then you were again found quietly living in Mixen Lane.

Walking along the lane at dusk the stranger was struck by two or three peculiar features therein.  One was an intermittent rumbling from the back premises of the inn half-way up; this meant a skittle alley.  Another was the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various domiciles—­a piped note of some kind coming from nearly every open door.  Another was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the women around the doorways.  A white apron is a suspicious vesture in situations where spotlessness is difficult; moreover, the industry and