years, as if by death, need hardly be detailed.  It was an affecting one, apart from the question of paternity.  Henchard’s departure was in a moment explained.  When the true facts came to be handled the difficulty of restoring her to her old belief in Newson was not so great as might have seemed likely, for Henchard’s conduct itself was a proof that those facts were true.  Moreover, she had grown up under Newson’s paternal care; and even had Henchard been her father in nature, this father in early domiciliation might almost have carried the point against him, when the incidents of her parting with Henchard had a little worn off.

Newson’s pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could express.  He kissed her again and again.

“I’ve saved you the trouble to come and meet me—­ha-ha!” said Newson.  “The fact is that Mr. Farfrae here, he said, ’Come up and stop with me for a day or two, Captain Newson, and I’ll bring her round.’  ‘Faith,’ says I, ‘so I will’; and here I am.”

“Well, Henchard is gone,” said Farfrae, shutting the door.  “He has done it all voluntarily, and, as I gather from Elizabeth, he has been very nice with her.  I was got rather uneasy; but all is as it should be, and we will have no more deefficulties at all.”

“Now, that’s very much as I thought,” said Newson, looking into the face of each by turns.  “I said to myself, ay, a hundred times, when I tried to get a peep at her unknown to herself—­’Depend upon it, ’tis best that I should live on quiet for a few days like this till something turns up for the better.’  I now know you are all right, and what can I wish for more?”

“Well, Captain Newson, I will be glad to see ye here every day now, since it can do no harm,” said Farfrae.  “And what I’ve been thinking is that the wedding may as well be kept under my own roof, the house being large, and you being in lodgings by yourself—­so that a great deal of trouble and expense would be saved ye?—­and ’tis a convenience when a couple’s married not to hae far to go to get home!”

“With all my heart,” said Captain Newson; “since, as ye say, it can do no harm, now poor Henchard’s gone; though I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, or put myself in his way at all; for I’ve already in my lifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness can be expected to put up with.  But what do the young woman say herself about it?  Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking about, and not bide staring out o’ the window as if ye didn’t hear.’

“Donald and you must settle it,” murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a scrutinizing gaze at some small object in the street.

“Well, then,” continued Newson, turning anew to Farfrae with a face expressing thorough entry into the subject, “that’s how we’ll have it.  And, Mr. Farfrae, as you provide so much, and houseroom, and all that, I’ll do my part in the drinkables, and see to the rum and schiedam—­maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient?—­as many of the folk will be ladies, and perhaps they won’t drink hard enough to make a high average in the reckoning?  But you know best.  I’ve provided for men and shipmates times enough, but I’m as ignorant as a child how many glasses of grog a woman, that’s not a drinking woman, is expected to consume at these ceremonies?”