In the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and the terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where breeding was carried on with Abrahamic success.  The head of stock driven into and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local auctioneer was very large; and all these horned beasts, in travelling to and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could do.  In the main the animals would have walked along quietly enough; but the Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was indispensable that hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be used, large sticks flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general everything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously disposed and terrify the mild.  Nothing was commoner than for a house-holder on going out of his parlour to find his hall or passage full of little children, nursemaids, aged women, or a ladies’ school, who apologized for their presence by saying, “A bull passing down street from the sale.”

Lucetta and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile drawing vaguely towards them.  It was a large specimen of the breed, in colour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about his seamy sides.  His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two nostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of yore.  Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper ring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth’s collar of brass.  To the ring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which the bull with the motions of his head flung about like a flail.

It was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women were really alarmed; for it revealed to them that the bull was an old one, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff being the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns at arms’ length.

They looked round for some shelter or hiding-place, and thought of the barn hard by.  As long as they had kept their eyes on the bull he had shown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they turn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided to thoroughly terrify them.  This caused the two helpless girls to run wildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge.

The barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to one of the usual pair of doors facing them, which had been propped open by a hurdle-stick, and for this opening they made.  The interior had been cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where there was a stack of dry clover.  Elizabeth-Jane took in the situation.  “We must climb up there,” she said.