lighted in a little steady flame, which never flickered in the still, hot air, though both door and window were wide open.  For there was a window, though it was easy to overlook it, opening into a passage four feet wide, which led darkly up into a still closer and hotter court, lying in the very core of the maze of streets.  As the houses were four stories high, it is easy to understand that very little sunlight could penetrate to Oliver’s room behind his shop, and that even at noonday it was twilight there.  This room was of a better size altogether than a stranger might have supposed, having two or three queer little nooks and recesses borrowed from the space belonging to the adjoining house; for the buildings were old, and had probably been one large dwelling in former times.  It was plainly the only apartment the owner had; and all its arrangements were those of a man living alone, for there was something almost desolate about the look of the scanty furniture, though it was clean and whole.  There had been a fire, but it had died out, and the coals were black in the grate, while the kettle still sat upon the top bar with a melancholy expression of neglect about it.

James Oliver himself had placed his chair near to the open door, where he could keep his eye upon the shop—­a needless precaution, as at this hour no customers ever turned into it.  He was an old man, and seemed very old and infirm by the dim light.  He was thin and spare, with that peculiar spareness which results from the habit of always eating less than one can.  His teeth, which had never had too much to do, had gone some years ago, and his cheeks fell in rather deeply.  A fine network of wrinkles puckered about the corners of his eyes and mouth.  He stooped a good deal, and moved about with the slowness and deliberation of age.  Yet his face was very pleasant—­a cheery, gentle, placid face, lighted up with a smile now and then, but with sufficient rareness to make it the more welcome and the more noticed when it came.

Old Oliver had a visitor this hot evening, a neat, small, dapper woman, with a little likeness to himself, who had been putting his room to rights, and looking to the repairs needed by his linen.  She was just replacing her needle, cotton, and buttons in an old-fashioned housewife, which she always carried in her pocket, and was then going to put on her black silk bonnet and coloured shawl, before bidding him goodbye.

“Eh, Charlotte,” said Oliver, after drawing a long and toilsome breath, “what would I give to be a-top of the Wrekin, seeing the sun set this evening!  Many and many’s the summer afternoon we’ve spent there when we were young, and all of us alive.  Dost remember how many a mile of country we could see all round us, and how fresh the air blew across the thousands of green fields?  Why, I saw Snowdon once, more than sixty miles off, when my eyes were young and it was a clear sunset.  I always think of the top of the Wrekin when I read of Moses going up Mount Pisgah and seeing all the land about him, north and south, east and west.  Eh, lass! there’s a change in us all now!”