At the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about Casterbridge that
Mr. Farfrae, already in the Town Council, was to be proposed for Mayor
in a year or two.

"Yes, she was wise, she was wise in her generation!" said Henchard to
himself when he heard of this one day on his way to Farfrae's hay-barn.
He thought it over as he wimbled his bonds, and the piece of news acted
as a reviviscent breath to that old view of his--of Donald Farfrae as
his triumphant rival who rode rough-shod over him.

"A fellow of his age going to be Mayor, indeed!" he murmured with a
corner-drawn smile on his mouth. "But 'tis her money that floats en
upward. Ha-ha--how cust odd it is! Here be I, his former master, working
for him as man, and he the man standing as master, with my house and my
furniture and my what-you-may-call wife all his own."

He repeated these things a hundred times a day. During the whole period
of his acquaintance with Lucetta he had never wished to claim her as
his own so desperately as he now regretted her loss. It was no mercenary
hankering after her fortune that moved him, though that fortune had been
the means of making her so much the more desired by giving her the air
of independence and sauciness which attracts men of his composition.
It had given her servants, house, and fine clothing--a setting that
invested Lucetta with a startling novelty in the eyes of him who had
known her in her narrow days.

He accordingly lapsed into moodiness, and at every allusion to the
possibility of Farfrae's near election to the municipal chair his former
hatred of the Scotchman returned. Concurrently with this he underwent
a moral change. It resulted in his significantly saying every now and
then, in tones of recklessness, "Only a fortnight more!"--"Only a dozen
days!" and so forth, lessening his figures day by day.

"Why d'ye say only a dozen days?" asked Solomon Longways as he worked
beside Henchard in the granary weighing oats.

"Because in twelve days I shall be released from my oath."

"What oath?"

"The oath to drink no spirituous liquid. In twelve days it will be
twenty-one years since I swore it, and then I mean to enjoy myself,
please God!"

Elizabeth-Jane sat at her window one Sunday, and while there she heard
in the street below a conversation which introduced Henchard's name. She
was wondering what was the matter, when a third person who was passing
by asked the question in her mind.

"Michael Henchard hav