On the turnpike road, between Casterbridge and Weatherbury, and about a mile from the latter place, is one of those steep long ascents which pervade the highways of this undulating district.
In returning from market it is usual for the farmers and other gig-gentry to alight at the bottom and walk up. One Saturday evening in the month of October Bathsheba’s vehicle was duly creeping up this incline.
She was sitting listlessly in the second seat of the gig, whilst walking beside her in farmer’s marketing suit of unusually fashionable cut was an erect, well-made young man.
Though on foot, he held the reins and whip, and occasionally aimed light cuts at the horse’s ear with the end of the lash, as a recreation.
This man was her husband, formerly Sergeant Troy, who, having bought his discharge with Bathsheba’s money, was gradually transforming himself into a farmer of a spirited and very modern school.
People of unalterable ideas still insisted upon calling him 'Sergeant' when they met him, which was in some degree owing to his having still retained the well-shaped moustache of his military days, and the soldierly bearing inseparable from his form.
'Yes, if it hadn’t been for that wretched rain I should have cleared two hundred as easy as looking, my love,' he was saying. 'Don’t you see, it altered all the chances?
To speak like a book I once read, wet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our country’s history; now, isn’t that true? ' 'But the time of year is come for changeable weather. ' 'Well, yes.
The fact is, these autumn races are the ruin of everybody. Never did I see such a day as ’twas! ’Tis a wild open place, not far from the sands, and a drab sea rolled