lipped under it a note to tell her of his departure, and
explaining its true reason to be a consciousness of her growing feeling
that he was an encumbrance and a humiliation. Of the direction of his
journey and of the date of his return he said nothing.

His course now took him into the high road, which he pursued for some
miles in a north-easterly direction, still spinning the thread of sad
inferences, and asking himself why he should ever return. At daybreak he
stood on the hill above Shottsford-Forum, and awaited a coach which
passed about this time along that highway towards Melchester and London.

CHAPTER VI

Some fifteen years after the date of the foregoing incidents, a man who
had dwelt in far countries, and viewed many cities, arrived at Roy-Town,
a roadside hamlet on the old western turnpike road, not five miles from
Froom-Everard, and put up at the Buck's Head, an isolated inn at that
spot. He was still barely of middle age, but it could be seen that a
haze of grey was settling upon the locks of his hair, and that his face
had lost colour and curve, as if by exposure to bleaching climates and
strange atmospheres, or from ailments incidental thereto. He seemed to
observe little around him, by reason of the intrusion of his musings upon
the scene. In truth Nicholas Long was just now the creature of old hopes
and fears consequent upon his arrival--this man who once had not cared if
his name were blotted out from that district. The evening light showed
wistful lines which he could not smooth away by the worldling's gloss of
nonchalance that he had learnt to fling over his face.

The Buck's Head was a somewhat unusual place for a man of this sort to
choose as a house of sojourn in preference to some Casterbridge inn four
miles further on. Before he left home it had been a lively old tavern at
which High-flyers, and Heralds, and Tally-hoes had changed horses on
their stages up and down the country; but now the house was rather
cavernous and chilly, the stable-roofs were hollow-backed, the landlord
was asthmatic, and the traffic gone.

He arrived in the afternoon, and when he had sent back the fly and was
having a nondescript meal, he put a question to the waiting-maid with a
mien of indifference.

'Squire Everard, of Froom-Everard Manor, has been dead some years, I
believe?'

She replied in the affirmative.

'And are any of the family left there still?'

'O no, bless you, sir! They sold the