frae. "Ye've wished to long enough!"

Henchard looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes met. "O
Farfrae!--that's not true!" he said bitterly. "God is my witness that
no man ever loved another as I did thee at one time....And now--though I
came here to kill 'ee, I cannot hurt thee! Go and give me in charge--do
what you will--I care nothing for what comes of me!"

He withdrew to the back part of the loft, loosened his arm, and flung
himself in a corner upon some sacks, in the abandonment of remorse.
Farfrae regarded him in silence; then went to the hatch and descended
through it. Henchard would fain have recalled him, but his tongue failed
in its task, and the young man's steps died on his ear.

Henchard took his full measure of shame and self-reproach. The scenes of
his first acquaintance with Farfrae rushed back upon him--that time when
the curious mixture of romance and thrift in the young man's composition
so commanded his heart that Farfrae could play upon him as on an
instrument. So thoroughly subdued was he that he remained on the sacks
in a crouching attitude, unusual for a man, and for such a man.
Its womanliness sat tragically on the figure of so stern a piece of
virility. He heard a conversation below, the opening of the coach-house
door, and the putting in of a horse, but took no notice.

Here he stayed till the thin shades thickened to opaque obscurity, and
the loft-door became an oblong of gray light--the only visible shape
around. At length he arose, shook the dust from his clothes wearily,
felt his way to the hatch, and gropingly descended the steps till he
stood in the yard.

"He thought highly of me once," he murmured. "Now he'll hate me and
despise me for ever!"

He became possessed by an overpowering wish to see Farfrae again
that night, and by some desperate pleading to attempt the well-nigh
impossible task of winning pardon for his late mad attack. But as he
walked towards Farfrae's door he recalled the unheeded doings in the
yard while he had lain above in a sort of stupor. Farfrae he remembered
had gone to the stable and put the horse into the gig; while doing so
Whittle had brought him a letter; Farfrae had then said that he would
not go towards Budmouth as he had intended--that he was unexpectedly
summoned to Weatherbury, and meant to call at Mellstock on his way
thither, that place lying but one or two miles out of his course.

He must have come prepared for a journey when he first