Between these two houses ran what the villagers called the High Street; and the eye followed the road, patched here and there with dark-coloured grass, for nearly a third of a mile, noting the gable-roofed houses that looked at each other from either side; the blacksmith’s shed, where the bellows were always roaring; the flat-roofed baker’s shop, standing importunately forwards, away from the little house in which the baker lived; the butcher’s hard by; the apothecary’s next to that; and the linendraper’s shop, which had absorbed the frontage of no less than two solemn-looking houses--noting these and other details contributing to the carnal or frivolous interests of the place, until it settled upon a small building, which, standing in the centre of the road, narrowed it into a large and a small lane, and thus marked the extent and importance of the High Street. Our story opens on a summer’s evening. The daylight is still abroad upon the distant hill-tops, but the twilight has fallen like an inaudible hush upon Southbourne, and the farmyards are tranquil, save when, now and again, some uncomfortable hen seeking a resting-place near to her sovereign cock hops for his perch, but in hopping falls and awakens the sleepers with her fluttering scrambles and keen notes of distress, echoed by a hundred wondering throats. The evening is warm, and many of the house doors are open; and at these open doors sit, here and there, men in their shirt-sleeves, or in homely smocks, smoking long pipes, and addressing each other from across the road with voices bespeaking laborious thought, which demands many reflective puffs to clarify and adjust. Now the apothecary’s boy comes out and lights the coloured lamp over the door, while the apothecary within sets two wax candles against his brilliant globes of lustrous dyes and illuminates the darksome roadway with a crimson and a yellow gleam. Now the linendraper’s assistant steps forth and puts up the shutters to his master’s windows, whilst the master himself struts along the floor, flapping his counter with a dust-brush, and inhaling the appetising perfume which streams from an inner room, and which is the best assurance he could demand that his supper is preparing. Anon comes a lame man, armed with a ladder, a lanthorn, and a can of oil at his girdle; he sets the ladder against a lamp-post, and in five minutes’ time succeeds in kindling a faint uncertain light in the darkling air. Thrice does he perform this laborious duty, and then, lo! the High Street is illuminated.