the
Scotchman. "To fetch it back entirely is impossible; Nature won't stand
so much as that, but heere you go a great way towards it. Well, sir,
that's the process, I don't value it, for it can be but of little use
in countries where the weather is more settled than in ours; and I'll be
only too glad if it's of service to you."

"But hearken to me," pleaded Henchard. "My business you know, is in corn
and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-trusser simply, and hay is
what I understand best though I now do more in corn than in the other.
If you'll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch entirely,
and receive a commission in addition to salary."

"You're liberal--very liberal, but no, no--I cannet!" the young man
still replied, with some distress in his accents.

"So be it!" said Henchard conclusively. "Now--to change the subject--one
good turn deserves another; don't stay to finish that miserable supper.
Come to my house, I can find something better for 'ee than cold ham and
ale."

Donald Farfrae was grateful--said he feared he must decline--that he
wished to leave early next day.

"Very well," said Henchard quickly, "please yourself. But I tell you,
young man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the
sample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I
pay you for this knowledge?"

"Nothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to use
it often, and I don't value it at all. I thought I might just as well
let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon ye."

Henchard paused. "I shan't soon forget this," he said. "And from a
stranger!... I couldn't believe you were not the man I had engaged! Says
I to myself, 'He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this stroke.'
And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who answered
my advertisement, but a stranger!"

"Ay, ay; that's so," said the young man.

Henchard again suspended his words, and then his voice came
thoughtfully: "Your forehead, Farfrae, is something like my poor
brother's--now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn't unlike his. You
must be, what--five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half
out of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, 'tis true that
strength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are what
keep it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Farfrae; bad at
figures--a rule o' thumb sort of man. You are just