He was now passing empty workshops, hesitating at door after door with ever-mounting alarm.

Then he began to call, but the sound of his voice served only to aggravate the silence.
Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield, letting him into a kind of smothered, troubled quietness even more oppressive than that outside.

He passed an empty ropewalk, the hemp strewn untidily about, as if the workers had left hurriedly.

He peered curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning-wheels--deserted apparently but the instant before he came.

It seemed as if the people were fled maliciously just in front, to leave him in this fearfullest of all solitudes.