.«
    »I do. He's an enemy to our house!«
    When she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a heavy hand to Farfrae thus: -
 
        Sir, - I make request that henceforth you and my stepdaughter be as
        strangers to each other. She on her part has promised to welcome no more
        addresses from you; and I trust, therefore, you will not attempt to
        force them upon her.
                                                                    M. HENCHARD.
 
One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better
modus vivendi could be arrived at with Farfrae than by encouraging him to become
his son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying over a rival had nothing to
recommend it to the Mayor's headstrong faculties. With all domestic finesse of
that kind he was hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his
diplomacy was as wrongheaded as a buffalo's; and his wife had not ventured to
suggest the course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.
    Meanwhile Donald Farfrae had opened the gates of commerce on his own account
at a spot on Durnover Hill - as far as possible from Henchard's stores, and with
every intention of keeping clear of his former friend and employer's customers.
There was, it seemed to the younger man, room for both of them and to spare. The
town was small, but the corn and haytrade was proportionately large, and with
his native sagacity he saw opportunity for a share of it.
    So determined was he to do nothing which should seem like trade-antagonism
to the Mayor that he refused his first customer - a large farmer of good repute
- because Henchard and this man had dealt together within the preceding three
months.
    »He was once my friend,« said Farfrae, »and it's not for me to take business
from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the trade of a man
who's been so kind to me.«
    In spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman's trade increased.
Whether it were that his northern energy was an over-mastering force among the
easygoing Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the fact remained that
whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in Padan-Aram, he would no
sooner humbly limit himself to the ringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade
than the ringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.
    But most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said
Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just
