the Doctor's house so suddenly, that his brass door-plate and three
stories stood among them as conspicuous and different as the doctor
himself in his broadcloth, among the smock-frocks of his patients. The
village residences seemed to have gone to law with a similar absence of
consideration, for a score of weak little lath-and-plaster cabins clung
in confusion about the Attorney's red-brick house, which, with glaring
door-steps and a most terrific scraper, seemed to serve all manner of
ejectments upon them. They were as various as labourers--high-shouldered,
wry-necked, one-eyed, goggle-eyed, squinting, bow-legged, knock-knee'd,
rheumatic, crazy. Some of the small tradesmen's houses, such as the
crockery-shop and the harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle
of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some
forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment
horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So
bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and
scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and
planted everything it once possessed, to convert the same into crops.
This would account for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of
the few boards and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of
the street, the bareness of the obsolete Inn and Inn Yard, with the
ominous inscription "Excise Office" not yet faded out from the gateway,
as indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of. This
would also account for the determined abandonment of the village by one
stray dog, fast lessening in the perspective where the white posts and
the pond were, and would explain his conduct on the hypothesis that he
was going (through the act of suicide) to convert himself into manure,
and become a part proprietor in turnips or mangold-wurzel.

Mr. Traveller having finished his breakfast and paid his moderate score,
walked out to the threshold of the Peal of Bells, and, thence directed by