as old
as the old house itself, had grown so stout, and cramped, and gnarled
that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground and stood distorted
and writhing in vegetable agony, like leafy Laocoons. The flowers which
smelt so sweetly were not discernible; and they passed through them into
the house.

The hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when they were over
Henchard said, "Pull your chair round to the fireplace, my dear fellow,
and let's make a blaze--there's nothing I hate like a black grate, even
in September." He applied a light to the laid-in fuel, and a cheerful
radiance spread around.

"It is odd," said Henchard, "that two men should meet as we have done on
a purely business ground, and that at the end of the first day I should
wish to speak to 'ee on a family matter. But, damn it all, I am a lonely
man, Farfrae: I have nobody else to speak to; and why shouldn't I tell
it to 'ee?"

"I'll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service," said Donald,
allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-carvings of the
chimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on
either side of a draped ox-skull, and flanked by heads of Apollo and
Diana in low relief.

"I've not been always what I am now," continued Henchard, his firm deep
voice being ever so little shaken. He was plainly under that strange
influence which sometimes prompts men to confide to the new-found
friend what they will not tell to the old. "I began life as a working
hay-trusser, and when I was eighteen I married on the strength o' my
calling. Would you think me a married man?"

"I heard in the town that you were a widower."

"Ah, yes--you would naturally have heard that. Well, I lost my wife
nineteen years ago or so--by my own fault....This is how it came about.
One summer evening I was travelling for employment, and she was walking
at my side, carrying the baby, our only child. We came to a booth in a
country fair. I was a drinking man at that time."

Henchard paused a moment, threw himself back so that his elbow rested
on the table, his forehead being shaded by his hand, which, however, did
not hide the marks of introspective inflexibility on his features as
he narrated in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with the
sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at first been visible in the
Scotchman now disappeared.

Henchard went on to describe his attempts to find his wife; the oath he
swore;