been noticed
in the roundabouts and high-fliers, machines for testing rustic strength
and weight, and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts. But the
real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new periodical
great markets of neighbouring towns were beginning to interfere
seriously with the trade carried on here for centuries. The pens for
sheep, the tie-ropes for horses, were about half as long as they had
been. The stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen-drapers, and other
such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles were far less
numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some little
distance, and then stood still.

"Why did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to
get onward?" said the maiden.

"Yes, my dear Elizabeth-Jane," explained the other. "But I had a fancy
for looking up here."

"Why?"

"It was here I first met with Newson--on such a day as this."

"First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now
he's drowned and gone from us!" As she spoke the girl drew a card from
her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and
inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, "In
affectionate memory of Richard Newson, mariner, who was unfortunately
lost at sea, in the month of November 184--, aged forty-one years."

"And it was here," continued her mother, with more hesitation, "that I
last saw the relation we are going to look for--Mr. Michael Henchard."

"What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told
me."

"He is, or was--for he may be dead--a connection by marriage," said her
mother deliberately.

"That's exactly what you have said a score of times before!" replied the
young woman, looking about her inattentively. "He's not a near relation,
I suppose?"

"Not by any means."

"He was a hay-trusser, wasn't he, when you last heard of him?

"He was."

"I suppose he never knew me?" the girl innocently continued.

Mrs. Henchard paused for a moment, and answered un-easily, "Of course
not, Elizabeth-Jane. But come this way." She moved on to another part of
the field.

"It is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think," the
daughter observed, as she gazed round about. "People at fairs change
like the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here to-day
who was here all those years ago."

"I am not so sure of that," said Mrs. Newson, as