of town and down. It stood, with regard to the
wide fertile land adjoining, clean-cut and distinct, like a chess-board
on a green tablecloth. The farmer's boy could sit under his barley-mow
and pitch a stone into the office-window of the town-clerk; reapers
at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on the
pavement-corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer,
pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in at the window
from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at executions
the waiting crowd stood in a meadow immediately before the drop, out of
which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the spectators room.

The corn grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by farmers
who lived in an eastern purlieu called Durnover. Here wheat-ricks
overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church
tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high as the gates of
Solomon's temple, opened directly upon the main thoroughfare. Barns
indeed were so numerous as to alternate with every half-dozen houses
along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow;
shepherds in an intra-mural squeeze. A street of farmers' homesteads--a
street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with the thump of
the flail, the flutter of the winnowing-fan, and the purr of the milk
into the pails--a street which had nothing urban in it whatever--this
was the Durnover end of Casterbridge.

Henchard, as was natural, dealt largely with this nursery or bed of
small farmers close at hand--and his waggons were often down that way.
One day, when arrangements were in progress for getting home corn from
one of the aforesaid farms, Elizabeth-Jane received a note by hand,
asking her to oblige the writer by coming at once to a granary on
Durnover Hill. As this was the granary whose contents Henchard was
removing, she thought the request had something to do with his business,
and proceeded thither as soon as she had put on her bonnet. The granary
was just within the farm-yard, and stood on stone staddles, high enough
for persons to walk under. The gates were open, but nobody was within.
However, she entered and waited. Presently she saw a figure approaching
the gate--that of Donald Farfrae. He looked up at the church clock, and
came in. By some unaccountable shyness, some wish not to meet him there
alone, she quickly ascended the step-ladder leading to the granar