Chapter 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 the coach makes up on me."

"Which way?"

"The way ye are going."

"Then shall we walk together to the top o' town?"

"If ye'll wait a minute," said the Scotchman.

In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard
looked at the bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no
mistake about the young man's departure. "Ah, my lad," he
said, "you should have been a wise man, and have stayed with
me."

"Yes, yes--it might have been wiser," said Donald, looking
microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. "It
is only telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague."

They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the
inn, and Elizabeth-Jane heard no more. She saw that they
continued in conversation, Henchard turning to the other
occasionally, and emphasizing some remark with a gesture.
Thus they passed the King's Arms Hotel, the Market House,
St. Peter's churchyard wall, ascending to the upper end of
the long street till they were small as two grains of corn;
when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road,
and were out of view.

"He was a good man--and he's gone," she said to herself. "I
was nothing to him, and there was no reason why