When Elizabeth-Jane opened the hinged casement¹ next morning the mellow² air brought in the feel of imminent³ autumn almost as distinctly as if she had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement⁴ 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 circuitous⁵ course, but flew straight down High Street without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing strange latitudes⁶. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged⁷ upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and innumerable tawny⁸ and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways⁹ 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 upwards¹².

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

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