Summary

The narrator describes his adolescent crush on the sister of his friend, Mangan. As a boy, he lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in Dublin. There was an uninhabited house standing at the end of the street, detached from the other houses. These houses faced one another so it was possible for the boy to watch his neighbors. The house in which the boy lived was formerly occupied by a priest. When the priest died, the boy, his aunt, and his uncle moved into the house. They found its rooms musty, and discarded papers had been left in a room behind the kitchen. Among these papers, the boy found several old books: a novel by Walter Scott, a devotional book, and the memoirs of a legendary detective. The narrator remembers that he liked the detective book best because its pages were yellowed...