be kept under my own roof, the house being
large, and you being in lodgings by yourself--so that a great deal of
trouble and expense would be saved ye?--and 'tis a convenience when a
couple's married not to hae far to go to get home!"

"With all my heart," said Captain Newson; "since, as ye say, it can
do no harm, now poor Henchard's gone; though I wouldn't have done it
otherwise, or put myself in his way at all; for I've already in my
lifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness
can be expected to put up with. But what do the young woman say herself
about it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking
about, and not bide staring out o' the window as if ye didn't hear.'

"Donald and you must settle it," murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a
scrutinizing gaze at some small object in the street.

"Well, then," continued Newson, turning anew to Farfrae with a face
expressing thorough entry into the subject, "that's how we'll have it.
And, Mr. Farfrae, as you provide so much, and houseroom, and all
that, I'll do my part in the drinkables, and see to the rum and
schiedam--maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient?--as many of the folk
will be ladies, and perhaps they won't drink hard enough to make a high
average in the reckoning? But you know best. I've provided for men and
shipmates times enough, but I'm as ignorant as a child how many glasses
of grog a woman, that's not a drinking woman, is expected to consume at
these ceremonies?"

"Oh, none--we'll no want much of that--O no!" said Farfrae, shaking his
head with appalled gravity. "Do you leave all to me."

When they had gone a little further in these particulars Newson, leaning
back in his chair and smiling reflectively at the ceiling, said, "I've
never told ye, or have I, Mr. Farfrae, how Henchard put me off the scent
that time?"

He expressed ignorance of what the Captain alluded to.

"Ah, I thought I hadn't. I resolved that I would not, I remember, not
to hurt the man's name. But now he's gone I can tell ye. Why, I came to
Casterbridge nine or ten months before that day last week that I found
ye out. I had been here twice before then. The first time I passed
through the town on my way westward, not knowing Elizabeth lived here.
Then hearing at some place--I forget where--that a man of the name of
Henchard had been mayor here, I came back, and called at his house one
morning. The old rascal!--he said Elizabeth-Jane had died