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Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little
lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be
discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and
orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the
woodland. From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence
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; where
reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences
wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in
other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are
enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and
closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.
This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's search.


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