I
walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under
some deadening spell of loneliness from which I almost feared to wake
it. Plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing in the
paved ways and rain had not washed away the prints of footsteps in the
dust. Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty ropewalks,
workshops, and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had
gone from his workbench and left his sash and casing unfinished. Fresh
bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood
piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his
coal-heap and ladling-pool and crooked water-horn were all there, as if
he had just gone off for a holiday. No workpeople, anywhere, looked to
know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket latch
loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers,
and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain;
or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and
sunflowers, hunting among the beds for cucumbers and love-apples--no one
called out to me from any opened window; no dog sprang forward to bark
an alarm.
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