long!"

"True....But there's great strength in hope. Knowing that in
four-and-twenty months' time ye'll be out of your bondage, and able to
make up for all you've suffered, by partaking without stint--why, it
keeps a man up, no doubt."

"No doubt, Christopher Coney, no doubt. And 'a must need such
reflections--a lonely widow man," said Longways.

"When did he lose his wife?" asked Elizabeth.

"I never knowed her. 'Twas afore he came to Casterbridge," Solomon
Longways replied with terminative emphasis, as if the fact of his
ignorance of Mrs. Henchard were sufficient to deprive her history of all
interest. "But I know that 'a's a banded teetotaller, and that if any of
his men be ever so little overtook by a drop he's down upon 'em as stern
as the Lord upon the jovial Jews."

"Has he many men, then?" said Elizabeth-Jane.

"Many! Why, my good maid, he's the powerfullest member of the Town
Council, and quite a principal man in the country round besides. Never
a big dealing in wheat, barley, oats, hay, roots, and such-like but
Henchard's got a hand in it. Ay, and he'll go into other things too;
and that's where he makes his mistake. He worked his way up from nothing
when 'a came here; and now he's a pillar of the town. Not but what he's
been shaken a little to-year about this bad corn he has supplied in
his contracts. I've seen the sun rise over Durnover Moor these
nine-and-sixty year, and though Mr. Henchard has never cussed me