The street was still and vacant.

The neat white houses with green blinds set back in their flowered yards would be at this hour sheltering people who had eaten heavily of chicken for dinner and now dozed away its benign effects.

Even song birds had stilled their pipings, and made but brief flights through the sultry air.
Dave Cowan sauntered through the silence in a glow of genial tolerance for the small town, for Dave knew cities.

In Newbern he was but a merry transient; indeed, in all those strange cities he went off to he was but a transient.

So frequent his flittings, none could claim him for its own.