9.


When Elizabeth-Jane opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow
air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if
she had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement of
the rural life around, not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in
the cornfields at the top of the town, who desired to get to the meads
at the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight down High
Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing
strange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated
into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains,
and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and
stole through people's doorways into their passages with a hesitating
scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.

Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head
and glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Henchard--now habited
no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business--was
pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was
looking from the window adjoining her own. Henchard it appeared, had
gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his acquaintance of
the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Donald Farfrae opening
the window further.

"And you are off soon, I suppose?" said Henchard upwards.

"Yes--almost this moment, sir," said the other. "Maybe I'll walk on till