y, there was a squat gray building called "the castle"; also
a memorial pillar dedicated to one Governor Smelt, with a flat top for
a statue, and no statue standing on it; also a barrack, holding the
half-company of soldiers allotted to the island, and exhibiting one
spirit-broken sentry at its lonely door. The prevalent color of the town
was faint gray. The few shops open were parted at frequent intervals
by other shops closed and deserted in despair. The weary lounging of
boatmen on shore was trebly weary here; the youth of the district smoked
together in speechless depression under the lee of a dead wall; the
ragged children said mechanically: "Give us a penny," and before the
charitable hand could search the merciful pocket, lapsed away again in
misanthropic doubt of the human nature they addressed. The silence of
the grave overflowed the churchyard, and filled this miserable town. But
one edifice, prosperous to look at, rose consolatory in the desolation
of these dreadful streets. Frequented by the students of the neighboring
"College of King William," this building was naturally dedicated to
the uses of a pastry-cook's shop. Here, at least (viewed through the
friendly medium of the window), there was something going on for a
stranger to see; for here, on high stools, the pupils of the college
sat, with swinging legs and slowly moving jaws, and, hushed in the
horrid stillness of Castletown, gorged their pastry gravely, in an
atmosphere of awful silence.

"Hang me if I can look any longer at the boys and the tarts!" said
Allan, dragging his friend away from the pastry-cook's shop. "Let's try
if we can't find something else to amuse us in the next street."

The first amusing object which the next street presented was a
carver-and-gilder's shop, expiring feebly in the last stage of
commercial decay. The counter inside displayed nothing to view but the
recumbent head of a boy, peacefully asleep in the unbroken solitude of
the place. In the window were exhibited to the passing stranger three
forlorn little fly-spotted frames; a small posting-bill, dusty with
long-continued neglect, announcing that the premises were to let; and
one colored print, the last of a series illustrating the horrors
of drunkenness, on the fiercest temperance principles. The
composition--representing an empty bottle of gin, an immensely spacious
garret, a perpendicular Scripture reader, and a horizontal expiring
family--appealed to public favor,