The Three Strangers

"The Three Strangers" is a short story by Thomas Hardy from 1883.
The story is a pastoral history[1] told by an omniscient narrator more than 50 years after the event. The sheep-stealer is a kind of folk hero who stole to survive and escaped by outsmarting his hangman.
Casterbridge was the name for Dorchester in Thomas Hardy's Wessex.[2]