It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I
came in view of my destination. A single gable and chimney of the
cottage peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a
trifle higher on the mountain, a tall old white-washed farmhouse
stood among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough
hills of pasture. I bethought me that shepherd folk were early
risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it
might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of
hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the
garden wall of my friends' house. The cottage was a little quaint
place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs. It had something
the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of it
rising in the midst two storeys high, with a steep-pitched roof,
and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels,
and transepts) one-storeyed and dwarfish projections. To add to
this appearance, it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and
gargoyles, ravished from some medieval church. The place seemed
hidden away, being not only concealed in the trees of the garden,
but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as high as the
eaves by the rising of the ground. About the walls of the garden
there went a line of well-grown elms and beeches, the first
entirely bare, the last still pretty well covered with red leaves,
and the centre was occupied with a thicket of laurel and holly, in
which I could see arches cut and paths winding.

I was now within hail of my friends, and not much the better. The
house appeared asleep; yet if I attempted to wake any one, I had no
guarantee it might not prove either the aunt with the gold
eyeglasses (whom I could only remember with trembling), or some ass
of a servant-maid who should burst out screaming at sight of me.