ight's welfare, and I have to traipse seaward many
miles.'

He went onward, and as he walked continued saying to himself, 'Now to
that poor wronged fool Edy. The fond thing! I thought it; 'twas too
quick--she was ever amorous. What's to become of her! God wot! How be
I going to face her with the news, and how be I to hold it from her? To
bring this disgrace on my father's honoured name, a double-tongued
knave!' He turned and shook his fist at the chapel and all in it, and
resumed his way.

Perhaps it was owing to the perplexity of his mind that, instead of
returning by the direct road towards his sister's obscure lodging in the
next county, he followed the highway to Casterbridge, some fifteen miles
off, where he remained drinking hard all that afternoon and evening, and
where he lay that and two or three succeeding nights, wandering thence
along the Anglebury road to some village that way, and lying the Friday
night after at his native place of Havenpool. The sight of the familiar
objects there seems to have stirred him anew to action, and the next
morning he was observed pursuing the way to Oozewood that he had followed
on the Saturday previous, reckoning, no doubt, that Saturday night would,
as before, be a time for finding Sir John with his sister again.

He delayed to reach the place till just before sunset. His sister was
walking in the meadows at the foot of the garden, with a nursemaid who
carried the baby, and she looked up pensively when he approached. Anxiety
as to her position had already told upon her once rosy cheeks and lucid
eyes. But concern for herself and child was displaced for the moment by
her regard of Roger's worn and haggard face.

'Why--you are sick, Roger--you are tired! Where have you been these many
days? Why not keep me company a bit--my husband is much away? And we
have hardly spoke at all of dear father and of your voyage to the New
Land. Why did you go away so suddenly? There is a spare chamber at my
lodging.'

'Come indoors,' he said. 'We'll talk now--talk a good deal. As for him
[nodding to the child], better heave him into the river; better for him
and you!'

She forced a laugh, as if she tried to see a good joke in the remark, and
they went silently indoors.

'A miserable hole!' said Roger, looking round the room.

'Nay, but 'tis very pretty!'

'Not after what I've seen. Did he marry 'ee at church in orderly
fashion?'

'He did sure--at our church at Ha