Thomas Hardy's plots often introduce an outsider into a tranquil current of events to project a disturbing force into the story. This outsider turns the current and sometimes continues to deflect it to a tragic end. Critics have called the outsiders “invaders” or “human ‘apples of discord’,” but they have not considered what light may be thrown on the nature of these invaders if they are studied in terms that Hardy himself suggests. In speaking of reddlemen, the class to which the invader Diggory Venn belongs, Hardy uses the term “Mephistophelian visitants.” This term is not inapt, I think, to describe a series of invaders, three of them dressed in red and all presented in a background of suggestions that they are preternatural.