a few clouds in the
west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among
them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the
fragments. The street was almost empty, and the air was chill. The
spring was busy, and the summer was at hand; but the wind was blowing
from the north.

The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is feature,
in the shadowy front of almost each of its old houses. Not a few of
them wore, indeed, something like a human expression, the look of
having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticed
oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in
a wind unfelt of the body--or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and
flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the
horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled
by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and
exercising a charm none of them would ever gain.

Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one
projecting story, stood about the middle of the street. The central and
oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of the ground-floor
encroached a little on the pavement, to which they descended very
close, for the floor of the shop was lower than the street. But,
although they had glass on three oriel sides, they were little used for
the advertising of the stores within. A few ribbons and gay
handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton, for the eyes of the country people on
market-days, formed the chief part of their humble show. The door was
wide and very low, the upper half of it of glass--old, and
bottle-colored; and its threshold was a deep step down into the shop.
As a place for purchases it might not to some eyes look promising, but
both the ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridge knew that rarely
could they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and
Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in
consideration. And, whatever the first impression concerning it, the
moment the eyes of a stranger began to grow accustomed to its gloom,
the evident size and plenitude of the shop might well suggest a large
hope. It was low, indeed, and the walls could therefore accommodate few
shelves; but the ceiling was therefore so near as to be itself
available for stowage by means of well-contrived slides and shelves
attached to the great beams crossing it in sev