The Woodlanders

mself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, m

shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of thick hair

and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation into the adjoinin

he aforesaid manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no means a “chosen vessel” for impressions

n the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men’s work that had bee

lothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in charact

eels and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that the road formed here at t

tly women. He held up his stick at its appro

Dollery,” he said. “But though I’ve been to Great Hintock and Hintock House half

which she was about to turn — just ahead. “Though,” continued Mrs. Dollery, “’tis such a little small place that, as a town gentleman, you’d need have a c

feet outside, where they were ever and

hood — though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging here — had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too short, his ta

rvice of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for modesty’s sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking at the van from the b

k for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they could forget the sorrows of the world

to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential chat about him as about other people,

et,” said one. “What business can bring him from his shop out here at this time and not a jo

, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow

ilence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation

ut the position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffect

lighted, Mrs. Dollery’s van going on to the larger village, whose superiority to the despised smalle

h the devil, lives in the place you be going to — not because there’s an

by one of the women at parting, as a las

ople except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the cas

ave been, if they were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reach

merging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that