years ago."

Elizabeth now gave earnest heed to his story.

"Now, it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet,"
continued Newson. "And, if you'll believe me, I was that upset, that
I went back to the coach that had brought me, and took passage onward
without lying in the town half-an-hour. Ha-ha!--'twas a good joke, and
well carried out, and I give the man credit for't!"

Elizabeth-Jane was amazed at the intelligence. "A joke?--O no!" she
cried. "Then he kept you from me, father, all those months, when you
might have been here?"

The father admitted that such was the case.

"He ought not to have done it!" said Farfrae.

Elizabeth sighed. "I said I would never forget him. But O! I think I
ought to forget him now!"

Newson, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and
strange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Henchard's crime,
notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer therefrom.
Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious, he began to
take Henchard's part.

"Well, 'twas not ten words that he said, after all," Newson pleaded.
"And how could he know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe
him? 'Twas as much my fault as his, poor fellow!"

"No," said Elizabeth-Jane firmly, in her revulsion of feeling. "He knew
your disposition--you always were so trusting, father; I've heard my
mother say so hundreds of times--and he did it to wrong you. After
weaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he
should not have done this."

Thus they conversed; and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth
any extenuation of the absent one's deceit. Even had he been present
Henchard might scarce have pleaded it, so little did he value himself or
his good name.

"Well, well--never mind--it is all over and past," said Newson
good-naturedly. "Now, about this wedding again."

44.

Meanwhile, the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward
till weariness overtook him, and he looked about for a place of rest.
His heart was so exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not
face an inn, or even a household of the most humble kind; and entering
a field he lay down under a wheatrick, feeling no want of food. The very
heaviness of his soul caused him to sleep profoundly.

The bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke him
the next morning early. He opened his basket and ate for his brea