good—stop, though,"he added, correcting
himself as a scrupulous man does, who will not
accept the help of the smallest false statement
to aid his dearest theory—"I do remember one
good thing which came, in some degree, of a
man's leading a solitary life."

The Hermit hugged his bars in triumph.
Mr. Traveller, nothing discouraged, requested
the stranger to mention the circumstance.

"You shall hear it," was the answer. "But,
before I begin, I must tell you that the period
of my tale dates some years back into the past,
that at the time of which I shall speak I had
newly experienced a considerable reverse of
fortune, and that, fancying my friends would make
me feel the loss if I remained among them,
I had determined to shut myself up away from them,
and lead an entirely solitary life till I could
in some degree retrieve my losses."

IT is a tale, this that I am about to tell,
of good deeds revealed, of good instincts
roused, of a good work done, and a good result
attained, and all through Evening Shadows.

I have often thought what tell-tell things
shadows are. I mean the shadows that one who
stands outside sees in the windows of a lighted-
up room or building; the shadows thrown on a
blind by figures interposing between it and the
lamp-light. I have noticed these in churches
during divine service, when I, wandering about
outside, have looked up at the windows and
seen the shades of a pair of lovers reading out
of the same hymn-book; of children evidently
chattering and grinning together; and sometimes
a shadow which bobbing forward from time to
time in a jerking fashion, then catching itself,
still with a jerk, then remaining preternaturally
erect and still, and then beginning to bob again,
has suggested to me that the fourth head of a
sermon in eight compartments was being
developed, and that the shadow before me was
that of one who was taking refuge from oratory
in sleep.

Among the number of the shadows which
my memory retains, there are some that lie upon
it with no dark and shuddering chill; some that
were cast by objects in themselves so pure and
noble that the shade itself seemed only a
subdued brightness, and the light that cast it—a
glory.

My story begins at the time, some years ago,
when, as a single man, I was living in a narrow
and rather crowded street in one of the old parts
of London—one of those streets where very
decent houses are mixed with much poorer ones
—and in one of the best and cleanest of which
I occupied two rooms; a bedroom and a
sitting-room. Having at that time, as I have
now, a great dread of noise while at work,
I made use of the back room as my studio,
sleeping in the front of the house, which was
quiet at night but not in the daytime, by reason
of the day traffic. My painting-room, then, was
on the second floor, and at the back of the house,
and as there was a street running at an acute
angle to that in which I lived, and joining it
only a few yards higher up, it will easily be
understood that the backs of the houses in this
slanting thoroughfare, which was called
appropriately enough, Cross-street, were in tolerably
close proximity to my painting-room window.
I have been thus exact in describing the
topography of my place of abode, because then
you will be better able to understand how it
happened that my attention was directed to the
circumstances which I am about to detail.

You will be able to understand how it was
that, sitting, especially during the short days,
as the dusk was beginning to fall, looking
meditatively out of window and thinking of
my work, my attention would often be drawn,
almost without my knowledge, to some of the
windows in the slanting street which I have
described, and how I found myself not
unfrequently speculating about some of the inhabitants
of the rooms which were separated from
that in which I was sitting, by so small a space.

There was one window more than all the rest
which, for some reason or other, used
especially to occupy my thoughts. It was a window
exactly level with my own, and exactly opposite
to it. During the daytime, though the
blind was always drawn up as high as it could
be, I could see but little of the room, but
what I could make out only showed me that it
was a very poor place indeed. Long habits
of a speculative use of my eyes, if I may so
express myself, have perhaps given me a tendency
to attach much importance to the external
aspects of things as indicative of what goes on
within. Be that as it may, I possess that
tendency, and possess it very strongly on the
subject of windows. I think that the windows of
a house give one a great idea of the dispositions,
the habits, and the tempers of the occupants.
Who has not felt, in passing by a house whose
well-cleaned windows are filled with flowers,
where the solid white and green of the Arum,
and the delicate shades of colour in the rows of
blossoming hyacinths, stand out in pleasant freshness
against the dark background formed by the
interior of the room—who has not felt that the
inhabitant of a house whose windows are thus
decorated, are in a calmer and happier condition
than their next-door neighbours, where the yellow
blind hangs crookedly across the dirty window,
and the wire screen beneath has got a bulging
ragged hole in it?

Holding, then, the theory which I have
ventured thus to put forward, it will be readily
believed that I augured the better of the occupants
of the room opposite, from the fact that I could
see through the lower panes of the window the
leaves and branches of a great big fuchsia spread
out fan-wise on a wooden frame. Other little
contrivances and adornments there were about
this poor casement, which, though of the cheapest
and most twopenny order of decorative art,
showed yet some love of the gentler side of
things, and a wish to put a good face on
poverty.

But it is, as I have already said, towards dusk
and in the evening that my attention has been