kfast
what he had packed for his supper; and in doing so overhauled the
remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated
carriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few of
Elizabeth-Jane's cast-off belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a
scrap of her handwriting, and the like, and in his pocket he carried a
curl of her hair. Having looked at these things he closed them up again,
and went onward.

During five consecutive days Henchard's rush basket rode along upon
his shoulder between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes
catching the eye of an occasional field-labourer as he glanced through
the quickset, together with the wayfarer's hat and head, and down-turned
face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless procession. It now
became apparent that the direction of his journey was Weydon Priors,
which he reached on the afternoon of the sixth day.

The renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for so many
generations was now bare of human beings, and almost of aught besides. A
few sheep grazed thereabout, but these ran off when Henchard halted upon
the summit. He deposited his basket upon the turf, and looked about with
sad curiosity; till he discovered the road by which his wife and himself
had entered on the upland so memorable to both, five-and-twenty years
before.

"Yes, we came up that way," he said, after ascertaining his bearings.
"She was carrying the baby, and I was reading a ballet-sheet. Then we
crossed about here--she so sad and weary, and I speaking to her hardly
at all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor.
Then we saw the tent--that must have stood more this way." He walked to
another spot, it was not really where the tent had stood but it seemed
so to him. "Here we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way.
Then I drank, and committed my crime. It must have been just on that
very pixy-ring that she was standing when she said her last words to me
before going off with him; I can hear their sound now, and the sound of
her sobs: 'O Mike! I've lived with thee all this while, and had nothing
but temper. Now I'm no more to 'ee--I'll try my luck elsewhere.'"

He experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking
back upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment
was worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the superadded
bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullifie