The sun is going down, and it seems to pause on the hill to take a last look at the town. Perhaps it is tired of seeing it from day to day, and will in future travel a new route, where objects of more interest may be seen. Anyway, it lingers on the hill, and looks at the ragged streets and houses of the unfortunate town down by the river, which is always hurrying away, as if to warn the people below to avoid Davy's Bend, where there is little business, and no joy. When its face is half obscured by the hill, the sun seems to remember The Locks, with whose history it has been familiar, and looks that way. So much shadow has gathered around it already from the woods across the river that objects are no longer to be distinguished: nothing but the huge outlines. At last the sun disappears behind the hill, but a friendly ray comes back, and looks toward The Locks until even the church steeple disappears; and Davy's Bend, and The Locks, with its sorrow and its step on the stair, are lost in the darkness. _By the Same Author._ _THE STORY OF A COUNTRY TOWN._ Howells pronounces it "this remarkable novel ... uncommonly interesting." Mark Twain finds the style "simple, sincere, direct, and at the same time so clear and so strong." The _Springfield Republican_ finds in it "a distinct flavor of its own ... the freshness and strangeness of the prairie life." The _Chicago Inter-Ocean_ finds it "the most dramatic of our American novels ... a drama of direct appeal." "There runs through the story a vein of pathos that is absolutely pitiful, and makes one think of 'The Mill on the Floss'.... It is a strong, stern, matter-of-fact book. Some of its pages stand out from their sad background of reality like one of Salvato Rosa's pictures.... Many of the situations are as dramatical as any of Bret Harte's."--_St. Joseph Gazette._ "Incomparably the best novel of the year, judged from any standard.... There is a grace, a sympathetic and tender feeling, a delicious sense of humor, that make the book remarkable.--_Brooklyn Union._ End of Project Gutenberg's The Mystery of the Locks, by Edgar Watson Howe