he
had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing
to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new
lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state
had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived
by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a
minimum--which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with
the departure of zest for doing--stood in the way of all that. He had
no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere
painted scene to him.

Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling
grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself: "Here and
everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though
wanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an
outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by
all, live on against my will!"

He often kept an eager ear upon the conversation of those who passed
along the road--not from a general curiosity by any means--but in the
hope that among these travellers between Casterbridge and London
some would, sooner or later, speak of the former place. The distance,
however, was too great to lend much probability to his desire; and the
highest result of his attention to wayside words was that he did
indeed hear the name "Casterbridge" uttered one day by the driver of
a road-waggon. Henchard ran to the gate of the field he worked in, and
hailed the speaker, who was a stranger.

"Yes--I've come from there, maister," he said, in answer to Henchard's
inquiry. "I trade up and down, ye know; though, what with this
travelling without horses that's getting so common, my work will soon be
done."

"Anything moving in the old place, mid I ask?"

"All the same as usual."

"I've heard that Mr. Farfrae, the late mayor, is thinking of getting
married. Now is that true or not?"

"I couldn't say for the life o' me. O no, I should think not."

"But yes, John--you forget," said a woman inside the waggon-tilt. "What
were them packages we carr'd there at the beginning o' the week? Surely
they said a wedding was coming off soon--on Martin's Day?"

The man declared he remembered nothing about it; and the waggon went on
jangling over the hill.

Henchard was convinced that the woman's memory served her well. The date
was an extremely probable one, there being no reason for delay o