printed in colours, I am sure I see. I see the Illustrated London
News of several years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop--which the
proprietor calls a "Salt Warehouse"--with one small female child in
a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious of rain. And I
see a watchmaker's with only three great pale watches of a dull
metal hanging in his window, each in a separate pane.'

'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what more
do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the man and the
pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?'

'I see nothing more,' said Brother Francis, 'and there is nothing
more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre, which was
opened and shut last week (the manager's family played all the
parts), and the short, square, chinky omnibus that goes to the
railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold
together long. O yes! Now, I see two men with their hands in
their pockets and their backs towards me.'

'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what do you
make out from the turret, of the expression of the two men with
their hands in their pockets and their backs towards you?'

'They are mysterious men,' said Brother Francis, 'with inscrutable
backs. They keep their backs towards me with persistency. If one
turns an inch in any direction, the other turns an inch in the same
direction, and no more. They turn very stiffly, on a very little
pivot, in the middle of the market-place. Their appearance is
partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable,
character. They are looking at nothing--very hard. Their backs