guests. Meanwhile, until they should appear,
I cast my eyes downward to the lower regions. There, in the dusk that
so early settles into such places, I saw the red glow of the kitchen
range. The hot cook, or one of her subordinates, with a ladle in her
hand, came to draw a cool breath at the back door. As soon as she
disappeared, an Irish man-servant, in a white jacket, crept slyly
forth, and threw away the fragments of a china dish, which,
unquestionably, he had just broken. Soon afterwards, a lady, showily
dressed, with a curling front of what must have been false hair, and
reddish-brown, I suppose, in hue,--though my remoteness allowed me only
to guess at such particulars,--this respectable mistress of the
boarding-house made a momentary transit across the kitchen window, and
appeared no more. It was her final, comprehensive glance, in order to
make sure that soup, fish, and flesh were in a proper state of
readiness, before the serving up of dinner.

There was nothing else worth noticing about the house, unless it be
that on the peak of one of the dormer windows which opened out of the
roof sat a dove, looking very dreary and forlorn; insomuch that I
wondered why she chose to sit there, in the chilly rain, while her
kindred were doubtless nestling in a warm and comfortable dove-cote.
All at once this dove spread her wings, and, launching herself in the
air, came flying so straight across the intervening space, that I fully
expected her to alight directly on my window-sill. In the latter part
of her course, however, she swerved aside, flew upward, and vanished,
as did, likewise, the slight, fantastic pathos with which I had
invested her.

XVIII. THE BOARDING-HOUSE

The next day, as soon as I thought of looking again towards the
opposite house, there sat the dove again, on the peak of the same
dormer window! It was by no means an early hour, for the preceding
evening I had ultimately mustered enterprise enough to visit the
theatre, had gone late to bed, and slept beyond all limit, in my
remoteness from Silas Foster's awakening horn. Dreams had tormented me
throughout the night. The train of thoughts which, for months past,
had worn a track through my mind, and to escape which was one of my
chief objects in leaving Blithedale, kept treading remorselessly to and
fro in their old footsteps, while slumber left me impotent to regulate
them. It was not till I had quitted my three friends that they first
b