After midsummer they watched the weather-cocks as men waiting in antechambers watch the lackey.  Sun elated them; quiet rain sobered them; weeks of watery tempest stupefied them.  That aspect of the sky which they now regard as disagreeable they then beheld as maleficent.

It was June, and the weather was very unfavourable.  Casterbridge, being as it were the bell-board on which all the adjacent hamlets and villages sounded their notes, was decidedly dull.  Instead of new articles in the shop-windows those that had been rejected in the foregoing summer were brought out again; superseded reap-hooks, badly-shaped rakes, shop-worn leggings, and time-stiffened water-tights reappeared, furbished up as near to new as possible.

Henchard, backed by Jopp, read a disastrous garnering, and resolved to base his strategy against Farfrae upon that reading.  But before acting he wished—­what so many have wished—­that he could know for certain what was at present only strong probability.  He was superstitious—­as such head-strong natures often are—­and he nourished in his mind an idea bearing on the matter; an idea he shrank from disclosing even to Jopp.

In a lonely hamlet a few miles from the town—­so lonely that what are called lonely villages were teeming by comparison—­there lived a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet.  The way to his house was crooked and miry—­even difficult in the present unpropitious season.  One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused for shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded figure on foot might have been perceived travelling in the direction of the hazel-copse which dripped over the prophet’s cot.  The turnpike-road became a lane, the lane a cart-track, the cart-track a bridle-path, the bridle-path a foot-way, the foot-way overgrown.  The solitary walker slipped here and there, and stumbled over the natural springes formed by the brambles, till at length he reached the house, which, with its garden, was surrounded with a high, dense hedge.  The cottage, comparatively a large one, had been built of mud by the occupier’s own hands, and thatched also by himself.  Here he had always lived, and here it was assumed he would die.

He existed on unseen supplies; for it was an anomalous thing that while there was hardly a soul in the neighbourhood but affected to laugh at this man’s assertions, uttering the formula, “There’s nothing in ’em,” with full assurance on the surface of their faces, very few of them were unbelievers in their secret hearts.  Whenever they consulted him they did it “for a fancy.”  When they paid him they said, “Just a trifle for Christmas,” or “Candlemas,” as the case might be.

He would have preferred more honesty in his clients, and less sham ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony.  As stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs turned.  He was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much and believed so little.