llow-creature. Like Prester John's, his table had been spread, and
infernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house, and
moved sullenly onward down the pavement till he came to the bridge at
the bottom of the High Street. Here he turned in upon a bypath on the
river bank, skirting the north-eastern limits of the town.

These precincts embodied the mournful phases of Casterbridge life, as
the south avenues embodied its cheerful moods. The whole way along here
was sunless, even in summer time; in spring, white frosts lingered here
when other places were steaming with warmth; while in winter it was the
seed-field of all the aches, rheumatisms, and torturing cramps of
the year. The Casterbridge doctors must have pined away for want of
sufficient nourishment but for the configuration of the landscape on the
north-eastern side.

The river--slow, noiseless, and dark--the Schwarzwasser of
Casterbridge--ran beneath a low cliff, the two together forming a
defence which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side
unnecessary. Here were ruins of a Franciscan priory, and a mill attached
to the same, the water of which roared down a back-hatch like the voice
of desolation. Above the cliff, and behind the river, rose a pile of
buildings, and in the front of the pile a square mass cut into the sky.
It was like a pedestal lacking its statue. This missing feature, without
which the design remained incomplete, was, in truth, the corpse of a
man, for the square mass formed the base of the gallows, the extensive
buildings at the back being the county gaol. In the meadow where
Henchard now walked the mob were wont to gather whenever an execution
took place, and there to the tune of the roaring weir they stood and
watched the spectacle.

The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region
impressed Henchard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of
the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient
of effects scenes, and adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to
melancholy, and he exclaimed, "Why the deuce did I come here!" He went
on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died,
in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a
single gentleman; and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town.

For the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter
disappointment, he might well have been pitied. He was like on