Sinopsis

"Unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no
secrets are hid."—Collect, English Communion Service.
In one of the south-western counties of England, some years ago, and in a
deep, well-wooded valley where men made perry and cider, wandered
little and read less, there was a hamlet with neither farm nor cottage in it,
that had not stood two hundred and fifty years, and just beyond there was
a church nearly double that age, and there were the mighty wrecks of two
great oak-trees, said to be more ancient still.
Between them, winding like a long red rut, went the narrow road, and was
so deeply cut into the soil that a horseman ing down it could see
nothing of...