conform to these flexuous changes; he remained stately and vertical, silently thinking. 

 The clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Jane turned to her companion. “The evening is drawing on, mother,” she said. “What do you propose to do?” 

 She was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. “We must get a place to lie down in,” she murmured. “I have seen—Mr. Henchard; and that’s all I wanted to do.” 

 “That’s enough for to-night, at any rate,” Elizabeth-Jane replied soothingly. “We can think to-morrow what is best to do about him. The question now is—is it not?—how shall we find a lodging?” 

 As her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Jane’s mind reverted to the words of the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an inn of moderate charges. A recommendation good for one person was probably good for another. “Let’s go where the young man has gone to,” she said. “He is respectable. What do you say?” 

 Her mother assented, and down the street they went. 

 In the meantime the Mayor’s thoughtfulness, engendered by the note as stated, continued to hold him in abstraction; till, whispering to his neighbour to take his place, he found opportunity to leave the chair. This was just after the departure of his wife and Elizabeth. 

 Outside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and beckoning to him asked who had brought the note which had been handed in a quarter of an hour before. 

 “A young man, sir—a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman seemingly.” 

 “Did he say how he had got it?” 

 “He wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window.” 

 “Oh—wrote it himself.... Is the young man in the hotel?” 

 “No, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe.” 

 The mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with his hands under his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking a cooler atmosphere than that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that he was in reality still possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever that might be. At length he went back to the door of the dining-room, paused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation were proceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence. The Corporation, 

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