From end to end nothing moved but an occasional shadow.

As he came near to Macwha's shop, he had to pass a row of cottages which stood with their backs to a steep slope.

Here too all was silent as a frozen city.

But when he was about opposite the middle of the row, he heard a stifled laugh, and then a kind of muffled sound as of hurrying steps, and, in a moment after, every door in the row was torn open, and out bolted the inhabitants--here an old woman, halting on a stick as she came, there a shoemaker, with last and awl in his hands, here a tailor with his shears, and there a whole family of several trades and ages.

Every one rushed into the middle of the road, turned right round and looked up.