‘It happened on Sunday after Christmas—the last Sunday ever they played in Longpuddle church gallery, as it turned out, though they didn’t know it then.  As you may know, sir, the players formed a very good band—almost as good as the Mellstock parish players that were led by the Dewys; and that’s saying a great deal.  There was Nicholas Puddingcome, the leader, with the first ; there was Timothy Thomas, the -viol man; John Biles, the fiddler; Dan’l Hornhead, with the serpent; Robert Dowdle, with the clarionet; and Mr. Nicks, with the oboe—all sound and powerful musicians, and strong-winded men—they that blowed.  For that reason they were very much in demand Christmas week for little reels and dancing parties; for they could turn a or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a , and perhaps better, not to speak irreverent.  In short, one half-hour they could be playing a Christmas carol in the ’s hall to the ladies and gentlemen, and drinking tea and coffee with ’em as modest as saints; and the next, at The Tinker’s Arms, blazing away like wild horses with the “Dashing White Sergeant” to nine couple of dancers and more, and swallowing rum-and-cider hot as flame.  
‘Well, this Christmas they’d been out to one randy after another every night, and had got next to no sleep at all.  Then came the Sunday after Christmas, their fatal day.  ’Twas so mortal cold that year that they could hardly sit in the gallery; for though the congregation down in the body of the church had a stove to keep off the frost, the players in the gallery had nothing at all.  So Nicholas said at morning service, when ’twas freezing an inch an hour, “Please the Lord I won’t stand this weather no longer: this afternoon we’ll have something in our insides to make us warm, if it cost a king’s .”
 
‘So he brought a gallon of hot brandy and beer, ready mixed, to church with him in the afternoon, and by keeping the jar well wrapped up in Timothy Thomas’s bass-viol bag it kept drinkably warm till they wanted it, which was just a thimbleful in the Absolution, and another after the , and the remainder at the beginning o’ the sermon.  When they’d had the last pull they felt quite comfortable and warm, and as the sermon went on—most unfortunately for ’em it was a long one that afternoon—they fell asleep, every man of ’em; and there they slept on as sound as rocks.
 
‘’Twas a very dark afternoon, and by the end of the sermon all you could see of the inside of the church were the pa’son’s two candles alongside of him in the pulpit, and his spaking face behind ’em.  The sermon being ended at last, the pa’son gie’d out the Evening .  But no set about sounding up the , and the people began to turn their heads to learn the reason why, and then Levi Limpet, a boy who sat in the gallery, nudged Timothy and Nicholas, and said, “Begin! begin!”
 
‘“Hey? what?” says Nicholas, starting up; and the church being so dark and his head so he thought he was at the party they had played at all the night before, and away he went, bow and fiddle, at “The Devil among the Tailors,” the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time.  The rest of the band, being in the same state of mind and nothing doubting, followed their leader with all their strength, according to custom.  They poured out that there tune till the lower bass notes of “The Devil among the Tailors” made the cobwebs in the roof shiver like ghosts; then Nicholas, seein............