Gabriel lifts the latch of Warren's Malthouse by its leather strap and walks into a room lit only by the red mouth of the kiln. The men round it narrow their eyes at him as if he were a light too strong for them. The ancient maltster, white-haired as a lichened apple-tree, says he knew Gabriel's grandfather, his grandmother and his father as a child, and his son Jacob, a young man of sixty-five, agrees. Then comes the real test. Jacob dips a finger into the God-forgive-me, a two-handled mug cracked and crusted with baked ash, and tries to dust the bottom with his smock because Gabriel is a stranger. Gabriel stops him: he never fusses about dirt in its pure state, when he knows what sort it is. He drinks, passes the mug on, and later chews the gritty bacon from the mistress without letting his teeth quite meet. 'A right sensible man,' says Jacob. Nobody tells him that he has passed, but he has.
The talk wanders and Gabriel wanders with it, waiting for his chance. Joseph Poorgrass is teased about his blushing, and about the night he lost his way in Yalbury Wood and gave his name to an owl. Joseph insists, with sudden courage, that he never said 'sir' to the bird. He tells too of the gate that would not open until he reached 'Saying After Me' in his prayers. Only then does Gabriel slip in the question he came with: what sort of a mistress is she? They know almost nothing of her. They know a good deal about her uncle's ale, and about Jan Coggan's first wife, Charlotte, the dairymaid, who would allow no swearing. Gabriel tries again and gets her parents. Levi Everdene was a gentleman-tailor and a celebrated bankrupt, whose roving heart was cured when his wife took off her ring and he called her by her maiden name. He ended so pious that he boxed the ears of charity-boys who laughed in church.
Henery Fray hints that the bailiff would tell a lie on Sunday as soon as on a weekday. The maltster adds up the places he has lived and arrives at a hundred and seventeen, and is cross when his son points out that he has counted every summer twice. Then Henery remembers the flute at Casterbridge fair. Gabriel admits that he was driven to it by great trouble and plays 'Jockey to the Fair' three times, jerking in time, then 'Dame Durden' while the company remarks that the flute makes him look like a strangled man. Joseph thanks Providence that the shepherd does not play bawdy songs. Gabriel thanks them and quietly resolves that Bathsheba must never see him playing.
He leaves with Jan Coggan, who has offered him a bed, and so he is not there for what follows. Henery returns to say that Baily Pennyways was caught creeping down the granary steps with half a bushel of barley and has been turned out. Then Laban Tall brings worse news: Fanny Robin, Miss Everdene's youngest servant, has not come in, and she went out in her indoor gown. Joseph guesses fire, Tall guesses drowning, Billy Smallbury guesses her father's razor. The men hurry to the farmhouse, where Bathsheba leans from a bedroom window in white and says she knows of no young man. Maryann says he is a soldier in Casterbridge, and William Smallbury offers to try the barracks. At Coggan's, Gabriel lies awake picturing Bathsheba and planning to fetch his few books from Norcombe. Bathsheba closes the casement. In the morning two or three men will ask quietly after Fanny in the villages round, and William Smallbury will go to the barracks to find a soldier whose name nobody knows.
