use. And he got no nearer to finding
out what they were all so busy with or where the main stream of their
activities lay. This remained hidden. The people were as soft and
mysterious as cats.

But that he was continually under observation became more evident from
day to day.

For instance, when he strolled to the end of the town and entered a
little green public garden beneath the ramparts and seated himself upon
one of the empty benches in the sun, he was quite alone--at first. Not
another seat was occupied; the little park was empty, the paths
deserted. Yet, within ten minutes of his coming, there must have been
fully twenty persons scattered about him, some strolling aimlessly along
the gravel walks, staring at the flowers, and others seated on the
wooden benches enjoying the sun like himself. None of them appeared to
take any notice of him; yet he understood quite well they had all come
there to watch. They kept him under close observation. In the street
they had seemed busy enough, hurrying upon various errands; yet these
were suddenly all forgotten and they had nothing to do but loll and laze
in the sun, their duties unremembered. Five minutes after he left, the
garden was again deserted, the seats vacant. But in the crowded street
it was the same thing again; he was never alone. He was ever in their
thoughts.

By degrees, too, he began to see how it was he was so cleverly watched,
yet without the appearance of it. The people did nothing _directly_.
They behaved _obliquely_. He laughed in his mind as the thought thus
clothed itself in words, but the phrase exactly described it. They
looked at him from angles which naturally should have led their sight in
another direction altogether. Their movements were oblique, too, so far
as these concerned himself. The straight, direct thing was not their way
evidently. They did nothing obviously. If he entered a shop to buy, the
woman walked instantly away and busied herself with something at the
farther end of the counter, though answering at once when he spoke,
showing that she knew he was there and that this was only her way of
attending to him. It was the fashion of the cat she followed. Even in
the dining-room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous waiter, lithe
and silent in all his movements, never seemed able to come straight to
his table for an order or a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly,
vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another table altogethe