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