excerpt from the book..One warm afternoon in June--the warmest of the season thusfar--Professor Valeyon sat, smoking a black clay pipe, upon the broadbalcony, which extended all across the back of his house, and overlookedthree acres of garden, inclosed by a solid stone-wall. All the doors inthe house were open, and most of the windows, so that any one passing inthe road might have looked up through the gabled porch and thepassage-way, which divided the house, so to speak, into two parts, andseen the professor's brown-linen legs, and slippers down at the heel,projecting into view beyond the framework of the balcony-door.Indeed--for the professor was an elderly man, and, in many respects, acreature of habit--precisely this same phenomenon could have beenobserved on any fine afternoon during the summer, even to the exactamount of brown-linen leg visible.