The coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but
the position of the sequestered little world could still be
distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less
ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the undiscerned
songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost
among them.
Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane,
at the corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's van
going on to the larger village, whose superiority to the despised
smaller one as an exemplar of the world's movements was not
particularly apparent in its means of approach.
"A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in
league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not
because there's anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the
middle of his district."
The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at
parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian
plunged towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the
dead leaves which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet.
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