n. He jumped again, but the cracking had ceased. Jude
went back to the edge, and stepped upon the ground.

It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He supposed
he was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Peaceful
death abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him.

What could he do of a lower kind than self-extermination; what was
there less noble, more in keeping with his present degraded position?
He could get drunk. Of course that was it; he had forgotten.
Drinking was the regular, stereotyped resource of the despairing
worthless. He began to see now why some men boozed at inns. He
struck down the hill northwards and came to an obscure public-house.
On entering and sitting down the sight of the picture of Samson and
Delilah on the wall caused him to recognize the place as that he
had visited with Arabella on that first Sunday evening of their
courtship. He called for liquor and drank briskly for an hour or
more.

Staggering homeward late that night, with all his sense of
depression gone, and his head fairly clear still, he began to laugh
boisterously, and to wonder how Arabella would receive him in his
new aspect. The house was in darkness when he entered, and in
his stumbling state it was some time before he could get a light.
Then he found that, though the marks of pig-dressing, of fats and
scallops, were visible, the materials themselves had been taken away.
A line written by his wife on the inside of an old envelope was
pinned to the cotton blower of the fireplace:

"_Have gone to my friends. Shall not return._"

All the next day he remained at home, and sent off the carcase of the
pig to Alfredston. He then cleaned up the premises, locked the door,
put the key in a place she would know if she came back, and returned
to his masonry at Alfredston.

At night when he again plodded home he found she had not visited the
house. The next day went in the same way, and the next. Then there
came a letter from her.

That she had gone tired of him she frankly admitted. He was such
a slow old coach, and she did not care for the sort of life he
led. There was no prospect of his ever bettering himself or her.
She further went on to say that her parents had, as he knew, for
some time considered the question of emigrating to Australia, the
pig-jobbing business being a poor one nowadays. They had at last
decided to go, and she proposed to go with them, if he had no
objection