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As for the stranger, he took little notice of those whom they met, be
their rank of position in life what it might; his eye was seldom off the
country on each side of him as they went along. It is true, when they
passed a village or small market-town, he glanced into the houses as
if anxious to ascertain the habits and comforts of the humbler classes.
Sometimes he could catch a glimpse of them sitting around a basket of
potatoes and salt, their miserable-looking faces lit by the dim light
of a rush-candle into the ghastly paleness of spectres. Again, he
could catch glimpses of greater happiness; and if, on the one hand, the
symptoms of poverty and distress were visible, on the other there was
the jovial comfort of the wealthy farmer's house, with the loud laughter
of its contented inmates. Nor must we omit the songs which streamed
across the fields, in the calm stillness of the hour, intimating that
they who sang them were in possession, at all events, of light, if not
of happy hearts.
As the night advanced, however, all these sounds began gradually to die
away.


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