In 1899, about the closing in of a chilly evening in November, I sat at the large wooden window of my house. For years I had been ill in health, accompanied by the common ups and downs of a weak body, but found myself in a good mood this evening. With a cigar in my mouth and a brown, woollen blanket wrapped around my legs, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the evening watching the street, which was very much crowed during the day. And now in peering through the smoky panes, I was surprised to see new faces in-between the black-dressed gentlemen who hurried to get home after a long day of work.
A man with a neat salt-and-pepper beard and a stern look was standing next to a carriage. The horse in the front appeared to be weary, and so I wondered where it had come from. It was rare to see newcomers in our small village. The latest newcomer was Mr Edward who had opened a tea-dealer's shop, which was still very infrequently visited, ten years ago - but everybody knows, in a general way, that being new means being strange, especially in a community as small as ours.
As the man climbed of the carriage, it was his height which was salient. He was at least 6.2 ft with broad shoulders and strong legs. His youthful appearance, however, didn't reach his face as it was marked by deeply-carved wrinkles. All in all, I estimated his age around forty and two years, but to be honest, I was never told his true age.
At a first glance, it seemed as if he had travelled all alone, but before the man started unpacking his carriage, he went to the front seat and returned with an infant of about five years in his arms. She was sleeping soundly as he carried her into the house, which was already very old and showed splinted wood on the doorframe. The house, you ought to know, had two storeys. On the ground floor was room for a shop while the family had room for themselves on the first. Although it was time-withered, the outside of the house looked snug and comfortable. Sash windows brightened up the house and had been added to it in a fairly symmetrical pattern, whereas the rooftop was covered by slate.
As he returned, he went to the back and started unpacking. He was very fast, I have to admit. As soon as one item of furniture was brought into their house, he reappeared to get the next one, but only when everything was unloaded and the man removed the carriage, I understood why the man was so fast, because the moment the carriage vanished, a boy appeared.
The boy was delicate, with skin as white as chalk and pitch-black hair. To speak plainly, the boy had, in spite of his young age of approximately 12 years, an audacious and virtuous kind of face. Yet when I had observed him for a considerable time, he appeared strangely lost.
The days went on and I soon learnt, the red wooden shop sign revealed the secret, that the man was called Mr Barrow and that he was a clockmaker. His shop windows were equipped with clocks in various sizes, which were all well-manufactured and beautiful in detail. From my window I had the perfect view into the shop and every morning I could see the boy, who always kept a stoic expression, winding all those clocks while his sister was playing with alphabet bricks on the ground. After winding the clocks, he swept the floor, before his father opened the shop.
I cannot just now remember when I first observed that the boy tended to disappear, but he did – quite frequently. Instead of going to school, he was probably too old for school anyway, or running errands, he was hiding. I had needed some time to spot him as he was sitting behind a barrel near the blacksmith's shop with a book on his lap. He was scrunching his eyebrows and pressing his lips into a thin line as he read page after page. You can image how curious I was to discover what the boy was reading, but it remained his secret for a long time.
Approximately an hour later, I was startled by a man screaming – and so was the boy:
'THOMAS, STOP HIDING AND COME HERE! NOW!'
