CHAPTER VI.
"In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked at me very attentively."-- GIL BLAS.
A SUMMER'S evening in a retired country town has something melancholy in it.

You have the streets of a metropolis without their animated bustle--you have the stillness of the country without its birds and flowers.

The reader will please to bring before him a quiet street in the quiet country town of C------, in a quiet evening in quiet June; the picture is not mirthful--two young dogs are playing in the street, one old dog is watching by a newly-painted door.

A few ladies of middle age move noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea: they wear white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw poke bonnets with green or coffee-coloured gauze veils.

By twos and threes they have disappeared within the thresholds of small neat houses, with little railings, inclosing little green plots.