culties. With all domestic finesse of that kind he was hopelessly at
variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as wrongheaded
as a buffalo's; and his wife had not ventured to suggest the course
which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.

Meanwhile Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own
account at a spot on Durnover Hill--as far as possible from Henchard's
stores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend
and employer's customers. There was, it seemed to the younger man, room
for both of them and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and
hay-trade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he saw
opportunity for a share of it.

So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like
trade-antagonism to the Mayor that he refused his first customer--a
large farmer of good repute--because Henchard and this man had dealt
together within the preceding three months.

"He was once my friend," said Farfrae, "and it's not for me to take
business from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the
trade of a man who's been so kind to me."

In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased.
Whether it were that his northern energy was an overmastering force
among the easy-going Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the
fact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob
in Padan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to
the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade than the
ringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.

But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said
Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's,
who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been described--as a
vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without
light to guide him on a better way.

Farfrae duly received the request to discontinue attentions to
Elizabeth-Jane. His acts of that kind had been so slight that the
request was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest
in her, and after some cogitation he decided that it would be as well
to enact no Romeo part just then--for the young girl's sake no less than
his own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.

A time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might,
Farfrae was compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Henchard in
morta