there stood one alone and then a whole little row, crowded close
together: a street.

They were in the village.

It was lone and still, like a cloister, with here a little woman who,
tucked into her hooded cloak, crept along the houses to the church; there
a smith who hammered ... and the little church-bell, which tinkled over
the house-tops.

They stopped. The dog sat down to look. The little fellow threw off his
shoulder-strap, pulled his cap down lower and felt under the red-brown
organ-cloth for the handle. He gave a look at the houses that stood
before him, pinched his sunken mouth, wiped the seam of his sleeve over
his face and started grinding. Half-numbed sounds came trickling into the
chill street from under the organ-cloth: a sad--once, perhaps,
dance-provoking--tune, which now, false, dragging and twisted out of
shape, was like a muddled crawling of sounds all jumbled up together;
some came too soon, the others too late, as in a weariful dream; and, in
between, a sighing and creaking which came from very deep down, at each
third or fourth turn, and was deadened again at once in those
ever-recurring rough organ-sounds or dragged on and deafened in a mad
dance. 'Twas like a poor little huddled soul uttering its plaint amid the
hullabaloo of rude men shouting aloud in the street.

The dog also had begun to howl when the tune started.

The little wife had settled her kerchief above her sharp-featured
old-wife's face; and, with one hand in her apron-pocket and the other
holding a little tin can, she now went from door to door: