_Far from the Madding Crowd_ is a novel concerned with Dorchester and the immediate neighbourhood, most of the incidents happening in "Weatherbury" (Puddletown) and "Casterbridge" (Dorchester). On market day at Dorchester one still meets prosperous farmers, stiffly dressed children, lean, tanned, rough-necked labourers caged in their Sunday clothes and stout horse-dealers in grey gaiters and black hats, and it is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the hiring fair mentioned by Hardy, where Gabriel Oak appeared in search of a situation as bailiff. It will be recalled that Bathsheba was in the habit of attending the Casterbridge market to sell her corn, and here she met William Boldwood, who attracted her attention on account of his indifference to her. Bathsheba comes vividly before us with her "debut in the Forum" in the place of her uncle. We can picture her with her beautiful black hair and soft, misty eyes attracting considerable attention as she displayed her sample bags, "adopting the professional pour into the hand, holding up the grains in her narrow palm for inspection in perfect Casterbridge manner." There was "an elasticity in her firmness that removed it from obstinacy," and "a _naïveté_ in her cheapening which saved it from meanness." In a "Casterbridge shop Bathsheba bought the valentine which she sent anonymously to Boldwood to tease him. It was this fatal valentine that drew his attention to Bathsheba, and caused him to fall strongly in love with her, and in the end to shoot Sergeant Troy dead. After this deed Boldwood travelled over Mellstock Hill and Durnover Moor (Fordington Moor) into Casterbridge, and turning into "Bull-Stake Square," halted before an archway of heavy stonework which was closed by an iron-studded pair of doors," and gave himself up for murder. The White Hart Tavern at "Casterbridge" serves to call to the reader's mind the reappearance of Sergeant Troy, _in propria persona_, after playing the part of Turpin in a circus at Greenhill Fair.