through the private little door which, admitting directly into
Henchard's garden, permitted a passage from the utilitarian to the
beautiful at one step. The garden was silent, dewy, and full of
perfume. It extended a long way back from the house, first as lawn and
flower-beds, then as fruit-garden, where the long-tied espaliers, as old
as the old house itself, had grown so stout, and cramped, and gnarled
that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground and stood distorted
and writhing in vegetable agony, like leafy Laocoons. The flowers which
smelt so sweetly were not discernible; and they passed through them into
the house.

The hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when they were over
Henchard said, "Pull your chair round to the fireplace, my dear fellow,
and let's make a blaze--there's nothing I hate like a black grate, even
in September." He applied a light to the laid-in fuel, and a cheerful
radiance spread around.

"It is odd," said Henchard, "that two men should meet as we have done on
a purely business ground, and that at the end of the first day I should
wish to speak to 'ee on a family matter. But, damn it all, I am a lonely
man, Farfrae: I have nobody else to speak to; and why shouldn't I tell
it to 'ee?"

"I'll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service," said Donald,
allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-carvings of the
chimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on
either side of a draped ox-skull, and flanked by heads of Apollo and
Diana in low relief.

"I've not been always what I am now," continued Henchard, his firm deep