ttage.
Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Henchard's
house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The
front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the
passage to the end of the garden--nearly a quarter of a mile off.

Mr. Henchard was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was
conducted into the mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which
was studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit-trees that
had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here she was
left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by hay-barns, into
which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from the waggons
she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides of the yard were
wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access was given by Flemish
ladders, and a store-house several floors high. Wherever the doors of
these places were open, a closely packed throng of bursting wheat-sacks
could be seen standing inside, with the air of awaiting a famine that
would not come.

She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending
interview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to
inquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Henchard could be found. He
directed her to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking at
the door she was answered by a cry of "Come in."

Elizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over
some sample-bags on a table, not the corn-merchant, but the young
Scotchman Mr. Farfrae--in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from
one hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses
of his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.

Having toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr.
Henchard, and for him alone, she was for the moment confounded.

"Yes, what it is?" said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled
there.

She said she wanted to see Mr. Henchard.

"Ah, yes; will you wait a minute? He's engaged just now," said the young
man, apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He handed
her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his sample-bags again.
While Elizabeth-Jane sits waiting in great amaze at the young man's
presence we may briefly explain how he came there.

When the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning
towards the Bath and Bristol road they went on silently,