than the admitted simple kinship as a means of accounting for them. 

 Two men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young Scotchman and Henchard, who, having entered the inn while Elizabeth-Jane was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been deferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl noiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to join her, which Mrs. Henchard mechanically did, her attention being fixed on the conversation through the door. 

 “I merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about something that has excited my curiosity,” said the Mayor, with careless geniality. “But I see you have not finished supper.” 

 “Ay, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn’t go, sir. Take a seat. I’ve almost done, and it makes no difference at all.” 

 Henchard seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed: “Well, first I should ask, did you write this?” A rustling of paper followed. 

 “Yes, I did,” said the Scotchman. 

 “Then,” said Henchard, “I am under the impression that we have met by accident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each other? My name is Henchard, ha’n’t you replied to an advertisement for a corn-factor’s manager that I put into the paper—ha’n’t you come here to see me about it?” 

 “No,” said the Scotchman, with some surprise. 

 “Surely you are the man,” went on Henchard insistingly, “who arranged to come and see me? Joshua, Joshua, Jipp—Jopp—what was his name?” 

 “You’re wrong!” said the young man. “My name is Donald Farfrae. It is true I am in the corren trade—but I have replied to no advertisement, and arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol—from there to the other side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing districts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the trade, and there is no scope for developing them heere.” 

 “To America—well, well,” said Henchard, in a tone of disappointment, so strong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. “And yet I could have sworn you were the man!” 

 The Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till Henchard resumed: “Then I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the few words you wrote on that paper.” 

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