was at the back of a farm-yard, I thought I might as well stop there as
anywhere else.

I am waiting for dinner-seldom a cheerful way of killing time. I do not,
however, expose myself to the risk of being irritated by the sight of my
willing but mechanical hostess scraping the white ashes from the embers,
parcelling out these into little heaps of fire upon the hearth, throwing
salt into the swinging pot with a hand the colour of which may be
distressing to the imagination, then tasting the soup: all this, and much
more, I leave her to accomplish in the gathering darkness of the kitchen,
and, sparing her the pain of lighting lamp or candle while there is still
a gleam of day, I wander out beyond the houses of the village to a quiet
woodside, there to watch the coming of night, which, whether it be
accompanied by wailing winds and storm-rack brimming with tears, or by that
grand serenity which grows in beauty as the light fails, is always like the
coming of death.

In the clear obscure, the brown and yellow rocks of bare limestone, at
the foot of which is the small inn, seem to be drawing nearer. All their
details become luminously distinct as the air grows darker, while the
caverns gape like the black mouths of some stealthily approaching,
monstrous, many-headed form. Two men are still working in a field of
tobacco, and they go on until lights flash forth from all the houses in the
valley. Then they slowly move off into the dusk with their ox and waggon.

All about the fields, where the night crickets are now chirruping and the
flying beetles are droning, there is a general movement of life towards the
village--of men carrying their mattocks on their shoulder or walking in
front of the ox that has done his long day's ploughing, of women and
children, geese, turkeys, and sheep.