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.