The Woodlanders | Page 5

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. As very few
people 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
casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which
showed that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and

things he observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who
resided here.
Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose
size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that
notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have 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 reached him from the back quarters of other
tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants,
and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot.
Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which
stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the
flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and
making a luminous mist of the emerging 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 a ribbon
of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without.
Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit
for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the
night.
CHAPTER II.
In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl
seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire,
which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a
leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making
spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a
leather apron for this purpose, which was also much too large for her
figure. On her left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks
called spar-gads--the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a
heap of chips and ends--the refuse--with which the fire was maintained;
in front, a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up
each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split it

into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous blows,
which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that of a
bayonet.
Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick
stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool,
with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting
oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure. The social position
of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown by the
presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by his old
helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do villager,
whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more permanent
than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools for the use of
his own dead; but for the last generation or two a feeling of cui bono
had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools were
frequently made use of in the manner described.
The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined
the palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and