She explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the journey on that day.  “And what became of the parcel then?” she asked.

He could not say—­he would consider.  When she was gone he recollected that he had left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room safe—­built up in the wall of his old house—­now occupied by Farfrae.  The letters might have been amongst them.

A grotesque grin shaped itself on Henchard’s face.  Had that safe been opened?

On the very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of bells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and leather bands played round the town with more prodigality of percussion-notes than ever.  Farfrae was Mayor—­the two-hundredth odd of a series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles I—­and the fair Lucetta was the courted of the town....But, Ah! the worm i’ the bud—­Henchard; what he could tell!

He, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous intelligence of Farfrae’s opposition to the scheme for installing him in the little seed-shop, was greeted with the news of the municipal election (which, by reason of Farfrae’s comparative youth and his Scottish nativity—­a thing unprecedented in the case—­had an interest far beyond the ordinary).  The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as Tamerlane’s trumpet, goaded the downfallen Henchard indescribably:  the ousting now seemed to him to be complete.

The next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven o’clock Donald entered through the green door, with no trace of the worshipful about him.  The yet more emphatic change of places between him and Henchard which this election had established renewed a slight embarrassment in the manner of the modest young man; but Henchard showed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Farfrae met his amenities half-way at once.

“I was going to ask you,” said Henchard, “about a packet that I may possibly have left in my old safe in the dining-room.”  He added particulars.

“If so, it is there now,” said Farfrae.  “I have never opened the safe at all as yet; for I keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o’ nights.”

“It was not of much consequence—­to me,” said Henchard.  “But I’ll call for it this evening, if you don’t mind?”

It was quite late when he fulfilled his promise.  He had primed himself with grog, as he did very frequently now, and a curl of sardonic humour hung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were contemplating some terrible form of amusement.  Whatever it was, the incident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first visit to the house since he had lived there as owner.  The ring of the bell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge who had been bribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors were revivals of dead days.

Farfrae invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the iron safe built into the wall, his, Henchard’s safe, made by an ingenious locksmith under his direction.  Farfrae drew thence the parcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.