l commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce attacks
of the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began
everybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some
degree, Northern insight matched against Southern doggedness--the dirk
against the cudgel--and Henchard's weapon was one which, if it did not
deal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh
at his antagonist's mercy.

Almost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of
farmers which thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of
their business. Donald was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few
friendly words, but the Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him,
like one who had endured and lost on his account, and could in no sense
forgive the wrong; nor did Farfrae's snubbed manner of perplexity at all
appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers, auctioneers,
and others had each an official stall in the corn-market room, with
their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series of
"Henchard," "Everdene," "Shiner," "Darton," and so on, was added one
inscribed "Farfrae," in staring new letters, Henchard was stung into
bitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered
in soul.

From that day Donald Farfrae's name was seldom mentioned in Henchard's
house. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane's mother inadvertently
alluded to her favourite's movements, the girl would implore her by a
look to be silent; and her husband would say, "What--are you, too, my
enemy?"

18.

There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth,
as the box passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel
across the highway.

Her mother was ill--too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated
her kindly, except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the
richest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came,
and they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied.

Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the
second morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see
a letter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had
expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked
at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and then he
read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.

The writer said that