I Forbid the Banns! — page 370: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XLIX. ON THE EMBANKMENT. E strolled on in an aimless way until he found himself on the Embankment, idly gazing at the progress down stream made by a barge with brown sails, rigged in accord- ance.with no recognized system. | This was how he spent an hour of the precious time which he meant to devote to the search for his beloved Bertha. The fact was that the words which Mr. Hardy had just spoken to him had bewildered him. He could not remem- ber all the words, but he knew that the general impression which they conveyed was not that they were uttered by an old fool. He had at one time looked on Mr. Hardy as something approaching an old fool, but not altogether an old fool; there was, he had felt, a certain reservation in his idiocy, but this was wholly filled up by knavery, He now felt that it was necessary for him seriously to revise his opinion regarding Mr. Hardy. He had beena true,and not a false, prophet, Julian could not but acknowl- edge; and if some of his more recent utterances had not been quite so intelligible as might be wished, it could not be said that in this respect they differed so widely from the utterances of the majority of prophets that the world has known. Obscurity was inseparable from the style in which the professional seer delivered himself. He was, however, occasionally permitted to live to a ripe old age. But on one point the prophet Hardy had not been obscure, and this point had the most important bearing upon the matter under consideration. (In this respect he 360 Gomichooks sco