"No White Shields here now," he said, mournfully.

That fastened window, too, the nail driven securely above the hook and
staple, had a mournful look to Charlie's soul. He remembered the story
that Simes Badger had told him about this window and the closed door
below.

"I wonder if they will ever be open," thought Charlie.

He remembered the river view that was possible from the "cupelo" above,
and he said, "Guess I'll climb up and see what the weather is." Charlie
was not a very experienced weather-observer, but he thought he would like
to obtain a wider outlook than the lane window had afforded him. He
planted an eye between the slats of his watch-tower and then looked off.
The view was neither extensive nor varied, mostly one of mud-flats. A
thick fog had come from the sea and stretched like a curtain across the
mouth of the dock in the rear of Aunt Stanshy's premises. The low tide had
left in the dock a stretch of ugly flats, out of which stuck various
family relics like pots and kettles, then pots and kettles again, and
finally a dead cat. Charlie saw several tall chimneys in the neighborhood,
but the buildings they decorated had been covered by the fog, and the
chimneys looked like a vessel's masts from which the hull had drifted
away, leaving them standing in depths of river-mud. Toward the sea it was
only mist, mist that looked extensive enough to reach as far as London,
whose fog-lovers would have welcomed it. Did the dock, the tall chimneys,
the mist, notice that curious eye up in the "cupelo" looking through the
slats and watching them?

"Guess I'll go down," said their owner.