There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child.

The villagers everywhere had already bestirred themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far less dreary hour of absolute darkness.

It had been above an hour earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day.
Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors were on the move, discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day.
The daylight revealed the whole of Mr.Melbury's homestead, of which the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection.

It formed three sides of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the largest and central one being the dwelling itself.

The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public road.
It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect; which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or other been of greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock St.Osmond also testified.