s. And of the result I will make you aware. Such is the view of
your servant Ping-Kee, who touches the ground you stand on with his
forehead nine times--and one time more.

THE MIDNIGHT WATCH.

CHAPTER I.

"For the watch to babble and talk,
Is most tolerable, and not to be endured."

_Much Ado about Nothing._

About the period when the civil wars between the Republican and Royalist
parties in England had terminated, after the execution of the unfortunate
Charles I., in the utter defeat of his son at the battle of Worcester, and
the dispersion of all the adherents to the royal cause, a small
castellated mansion, not far from the eastern coast of England, was
garrisoned by a party of the Parliamentary troops.

This mansion, which had belonged to a Royalist family who had fled the
land, having been seized upon and confiscated by the Parliamentary
commissioners employed in sequestrating the property of confirmed enemies
of the commonwealth, had been converted into a sort of fortress or
stronghold, the natural defences and isolated position of which, rendered
it peculiarly adapted as a place of confinement for prisoners of war. Its
situation, at the same time, so near the coast, gave it an additional
advantage as a post of observation, whence measures might be taken for the
interception of such Royalists, who, proscribed as obstinate malignants,
might be led to this part of the country in their attempts to seek the
means of escape.

Flanked on one side by the waters of the river, this isolated house was
cut off on the other three by a broad ditch or moat, being thus entirely
surrounded by water, except at one point the most remote from the river,
where it communicated by a wooden bridge with a causeway, lined by an
avenue of trees, which served as an approach, and traversed at some length
a low level tract of land before it reached the higher and more hilly
country. A similar tract of level, but of a more marshy and swampy
description, stretched along the opposite bank of the river, terminating
at some distance by a line of low well-wooded hills. Not far from the
house, which stood thus alone, like a solitary bittern in a Dutch
landscape, the river widened suddenly into a large expanse of water,
called in this part of England a "broad," which was itself only separated
from the sea by a narrow strip of low sand-banks, and sandy downs or
deanes, as they are there termed,