Snow, Secrets, and Broken Promises — Far from the Madding Crowd

Far north of Weatherbury on the same snowy night, Fanny Robin crosses a bleak barracks town, counts windows along a high wall, and throws snowballs until one strikes the fifth. Sergeant Troy answers from inside, astonished when the blurred figure names herself his wife and he must speak through darkness, river noise, and military discipline.

Their talk is cold and halting. She has walked from Weatherbury through carriers and snow to ask when they will marry; he deflects with talk of clothes, banns across two parishes, and permission from officers he has not yet secured though he once nearly had it at Casterbridge. She pleads without armour; he promises vaguely to visit her at Mrs Twills's lodgings rather than the barracks and shuts the window.

Fanny retreats through the snow with hope thinner than the storm, calling good-night to a man whose comrades already mock him. Inside the wall soldiers laugh with ho-ho laughter Hardy leaves indistinct, while the reader knows Weatherbury's missing servant is bound to a man already treating marriage as inconvenience rather than vow, and that Bathsheba's farm still waits without answer for news of a girl feared lost to the marching regiment and the sergeant who forgot to ask his officers.