The place becomes quite sinister, particularly in winter time.
One Sunday evening, at about seven o'clock, a young man stepped lightly from the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and, closely skirting the walls, took his way among the timber in the wood-yard.

It was in the early part of December, 1851.

The weather was dry and cold.

The full moon shone with that sharp brilliancy peculiar to winter moons.

The wood-yard did not have the forbidding appearance which it wears on rainy nights; illumined by stretches of white light, and wrapped in deep and chilly silence, it spread around with a soft, melancholy aspect.
For a few seconds the young man paused on the edge of the yard and gazed mistrustfully in front of him.