en well known of old and always, it might by this time
have grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but
well-nigh the single one, of a young man with whom the steady and mature
(if somewhat headstrong) burgher of to-day had scarcely a point in
common. But the act having lain as dead and buried ever since, the
interspace of years was unperceived; and the black spot of his youth
wore the aspect of a recent crime.

Small as the police-court incident had been in itself, it formed the
edge or turn in the incline of Henchard's fortunes. On that day--almost
at that minute--he passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began
to descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sank
in esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downwards; and,
having already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the
velocity of his descent in both aspects became accelerated every hour.

He now gazed more at the pavements and less at the house-fronts when he
walked about; more at the feet and leggings of men, and less into the
pupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made
them blink.

New events combined to undo him. It had been a bad year for others
besides himself, and the heavy failure of a debtor whom he had trusted
generously completed the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now,
in his desperation, he failed to preserve that strict correspondence
between bulk and sample which is the soul of commerce in grain. For
this, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great
unwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of
second-rate corn which Henchard had in hand, and removed the pinched,
blasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if
honestly offered would have created no scandal; but the blunder of
misrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Henchard's name into
the ditch.

The details of his failure were of the ordinary kind. One day
Elizabeth-Jane was passing the King's Arms, when she saw people bustling
in and out more than usual where there was no market. A bystander
informed her, with some surprise at her ignorance, that it was a meeting
of the Commissioners under Mr. Henchard's bankruptcy. She felt quite
tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel she wished
to go in and see him, but was advised not to intrude that day.

The room in which debtor and creditors had assembled was a front