The man, who was Charl, shook his head absently.  “I’ve been here this last hour, hain’t I, Nance?” he said to the woman who meditatively sipped her ale near him.

“Faith, that you have.  I came in for my quiet suppertime half-pint, and you were here then, as well as all the rest.”

The other constable was facing the clock-case, where he saw reflected in the glass a quick motion by the landlady.  Turning sharply, he caught her closing the oven-door.

“Something curious about that oven, ma’am!” he observed advancing, opening it, and drawing out a tambourine.

“Ah,” she said apologetically, “that’s what we keep here to use when there’s a little quiet dancing.  You see damp weather spoils it, so I put it there to keep it dry.”

The constable nodded knowingly, but what he knew was nothing.  Nohow could anything be elicited from this mute and inoffensive assembly.  In a few minutes the investigators went out, and joining those of their auxiliaries who had been left at the door they pursued their way elsewhither.

40.

Long before this time Henchard, weary of his ruminations on the bridge, had repaired towards the town.  When he stood at the bottom of the street a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of an alley just above him.  The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled him; he saw the mounted images, and knew what it all meant.

They crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared.  He turned back a few steps and was lost in grave reflection, finally wending his way homeward by the obscure river-side path.  Unable to rest there he went to his step-daughter’s lodging, and was told that Elizabeth-Jane had gone to Mr. Farfrae’s.  Like one acting in obedience to a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same direction in the hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished.  Disappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell, and then learnt particulars of what had occurred, together with the doctor’s imperative orders that Farfrae should be brought home, and how they had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.

“But he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!” exclaimed Henchard, now unspeakably grieved.  “Not Budmouth way at all.”

But, alas! for Henchard; he had lost his good name.  They would not believe him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of recklessness.  Though Lucetta’s life seemed at that moment to depend upon her husband’s return (she being in great mental agony lest he should never know the unexaggerated truth of her past relations with Henchard), no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury.  Henchard, in a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Farfrae himself.