The Watchman

“ Three minutes pass in silence.
“One’s in a fever, another’s asleep, and the third is seeing pilgrims on their way,” mutters the stranger. “Capital watchmen, they are worth their salary! Ye-es, brother, thieves have always been cleverer than watchmen! Stand still, don’t stir. . . .”
Five minutes, ten minutes pass in silence. All at once the wind brings the sound of a whistle.
“Well, now you can go,” says the stranger, releasing the watchman’s arm. “Go and thank God you are alive!”
The stranger gives a whistle too, runs away from the gate, and the watchman hears him leap over the ditch. ”

“ A name which they delight to apply to themselves is Watchmen. As the watchman, stationed on his tower over the city-gate, kept guard over the safety of the place, giving notice when danger was approaching and summoning the citizens to defend themselves, so the prophets from their watch-tower—that is, the position of elevation and observation which inspiration gave them—watched over the weal of the state, observing narrowly its condition within, keeping their eye on the influences to which it was exposed from without, and, when danger threatened, giving the alarm. ”

“ Starting back in terror, I fell against a man, who seized me with a strong grip of his arms. By the halbert he was carrying, I thought he was the watchman; so I said, 'Dearest watchman!--worthy man!--please to drive away that wraith of Clerk of the Privy Chancery Tussmann from that door there, so that I, the real Tussmann, may get into my lodgings.' But the man growled out, 'Why, Tussmann! you're surely out of your senses!' in a hollow voice; and I saw it wasn't the watchman at all, but that terrible Goldsmith who had got me in his arms. Drops of cold perspiration stood on my forehead. ”

“ On the other hand, the watchman blew his horn, making his “List, gentlemen!” sound over all the hamlet; and for the composure of the timorous astronomer, who still kept feasting his eyes on the splendour of the stars, uplifted a rusty evening-hymn right under his window; so that Franz might easily have carried on a conversation with him, which, for the sake of company, he would willingly have done, had he in the least expected that the watchman would make answer to him. ”

“ The watchman swings his lantern and walks with his shadow at his side, and never once goes to bed in his life.
I wish I were a watchman walking the streets all night, chasing the shadows with my lantern.
Superior Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
She does not know the difference between the lights in the streets and the stars.
When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real food, and tries to put them into her mouth. ”

“ Evidently the watchman had taken shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere in the kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man, "the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the door and entered the hall of the garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, with no bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in the corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room were unbroken. ”

“ Watchers were stationed to give warning of the approach of the monsters, for their great bodies cast shadows upon the earth like those of the low-passing clouds on a summer day, and long before they appeared in the sky the cry of the watchman sent all within the sound of his voice to their places of refuge under the ground. ”

“ Good verse, clever poems, a good idea. The watchman in his uniform, armed with his spiked mace, his horn in his hand, goes his nightly round, and, pausing outside the houses, tells us what he sees and imagines within.
He is a genuine night-watchman—thoroughly weary of the old woman at home, who is so ugly and so wrinkled, yet with whom he manages to live peaceably, for she sleeps by night and he by day; a genuine night-watchman, who sings the watchman's song about lights and fires; looks up at the prisoners, the political prisoners, peering through the iron bars and shaking them ”

“ Mrs. Darling asked if it had occurred to me that the watchman might give me in charge. I assured her that I had not left such a contingency out of my calculations. I should well tip the watchman, and a drink out of my flask on top of the tip would make a friend of him for life. No doubt he would be glad of a talk to relieve the monotony of his job, and the talk of a night watchman in Westminster Abbey would be worth listening to. ”

“ Or perhaps a child would wake up in a troubled dream, and would lay and listen, terrified by hideous imaginations of thieves and robbers climbing in at the kitchen window to kill father and mother with long knives. But outside the watchman cries: "Two o'clock, and a still night."
Ah! the watch; yes, of course, that was the watch; so no thieves or robbers can come in at the kitchen window. All bad people must stay at home, or the watch will take them to the lock-up. ”

“ It seems the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out, and said, with an angry, quick tone, "What do ye want, that ye make such a knocking?" He answered: "I am the watchman! how do you do? what is the matter?" ”

“ Whether this drew the watchman’s attention in an unusual degree, of course I do not know, but he stopped to say, “Good-evening, Biddy.”
“Good-evening to ye, me dear, and a nasty damp evening it is.”
“You’re taking something to keep the damp out, I see, missus.”
“I am, dear; but it’s not for a foine milithrary-looking man like yourself to be having the laugh at a poor old craythur with nothin’ but the wind and weather in her bones.”
“The wind and weather get into my bones, I can tell you,” said the watchman; “and I begin my work in the fog just when you’re getting out of it.” ”

“ The watchman is provided with a two-pronged, upward-toothed fork, with which he can "run in" any refractory member of society by the neck; and he has the power to detain any one not giving satisfactory reasons for being about at that hour. ”

“ He answer'd, I am the Watchman! how do you do? What is the Matter? The Person answered, What is that to you? Stop the Dead-Cart. This it seems, was about one a-Clock; soon after, as the Fellow said, he stopped the Dead-Cart, and then knock'd again, but no Body answer'd: He continued knocking, and the Bellman call'd out several Times, Bring out your Dead, but no Body answered, till the Man that drove the Cart being call'd to other Houses, would stay no longer, and drove away. ”

“ The watchman's steps shuffled past the door. They stopped. Through the glass panel I saw the shadow of an arm reaching out. The door opened part way. Standing behind it, holding my breath, I heard the watchman grunt. He pulled the door shut with a decisive bang.
I waited a moment before checking the door. It had an automatic lock which was now set.
When I was sure the watchman was out of earshot, I searched the office and its connecting laboratory. Both were empty. I went back to the desk in the office and took the black crystal from my pocket. ”

“ The figure of the watchman is often used in the Bible, as for example when he stands upon the city walls and is told that if he sounds the trumpet telling of the approach of the enemy and the people hear and do not take warning their blood is upon their own heads, while if he fails to sound the trumpet and the people are cut off, their blood is required at the watchman's hand. ”

“ I went faster and faster in order to get warm, slapped my arms, chafed my legs—which by now I could hardly feel under me—and thus reached the watch-house of the fire brigade. It was nine o'clock; I had been asleep for several hours.
Whatever shall I do with myself? I must go to some place. I stand there and stare up at the watch-house, and query if it would not be possible to succeed in getting into one of the passages if I were to watch for a moment when the watchman's back was turned. I ascend the steps, and prepare to open a conversation with the man. ”

“ But the watchman was not a strong man, so he was afraid to arrest him, and followed him in the dark, until, at length, the apparition looked round, paused, and inquired, “What do you want?” at the same time showing such a fist as is never seen on living men. ”

“ I believed that on one of these trips, which occurred about eleven o’clock, I could capture the watchman. In the meantime, Patrolman Conners would keep the outside private watchmen well away from the bank. With my associates carrying the needful tools and others of us “walking” the captured watchman into the bank, it would be easy to overcome the other one and work our way into the vault. ”

“ The watchman—holding his lantern close to the door, and so perceiving that what she tells is verified by the caked dust that fills its crevices and that clogs its key-hole—is for abandoning their attempt to enter. The friar insists that they must enter: that his rosary is within the house; that he is determined to recover it; that the door must be forced. Yielding to him, the watchman forces the door and together they enter: to find a yellowed skeleton upon the floor ”

“ Watchman,” an old man with one arm who used to come by the house where the small boy lived. He was a watchman somewhere at a railroad crossing, a solid, weary, brown faced white haired man who in winter wore a heavy great coat, in summer a loose, brown jacket, the pockets of which, or one pocket, at least, always, and every day, nearly, contained something which, if the little boy would only hurry out each morning or evening and climb on the fence and reach for, he might have. ”

“ Watchman. Thank you.”
And then the old watchman would go trudging onward with his bucket on his arm, and the boy would munch his candy or his peanuts or his apple and forget how kind and strange old Mr. Watchman really was—and how pathetic.
Then one day, some time later, after a considerable 390absence or silence on the part of Mr. Watchman, the small boy was taken to see him where he was lying very still in a very humble little cottage, in a black box, with nickels on his eyes—and the little boy wanted to take the nickels, too. ”

“ I didn't dare even to light a match, for fear a cop might see me. Just then, all of a sudden, the watchman called out softly that the roundsman was coming and I'd better beat it while the going was good! I just had time to duck off that beam, crawl along the darkest side of the wall, and sneak out as the roundsman came along and stood talking to the watchman, as he always does, for about fifteen minutes. I148 got into the house all hunky,—and that's why it ain't any use for me to be there this afternoon! ”

“ The watchman picked him up carried him into the elevator, and finally walked into Vendra’s office with the unconscious Andy in his arms.
Blatz started back in white-faced amazement.
“Is he badly hurt?” he asked.
“No,” grunted the watchman. “He’ll come around in a few minutes. ”

“ The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should say a working person; to the best of his belief, he had a dust-coloured kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchman made more light of the matter than I did, and naturally ”

“ I looked down at the night watchman—God bless him! He was a big, strong, comfortably fat fellow made of real flesh and blood, and no ghost shape of the night. I looked at the round tower of the church—how massive and venerable it stood there, gray in the gray of the morning mists. I looked over at the market place. There was a light in the baker shop and a farmer stood before it, tying his horse to a post. Back in my own room everything was in its usual place. Even the little paper bag with the sugar lay there on the window sill, and the imprisoned fly buzzed louder than ever. ”

“ In his professional capacity, the watchman has more than one foe in the town, and it is therefore difficult to 'spot,' and afterwards capture, the actual offender. The warning letter, however, admonishes him that so long as he does not walk in a certain locality, no harm to him can possibly accrue. It is not easy for Mateo to avoid the indicated thoroughfare, as it happens to come exactly within our watchman's beat at night; but he surmounts the obstacle at the risk of incurring his employers' displeasure, by exchanging beats with a brother watchman. ”

“ In each of these is a bier for the body, directly above which hangs a cord, having on the end ten thimbles, which are put upon the fingers of the corpse, so that the slightest motion strikes a bell in the watchman's room. Lamps are lighted at night, and in winter the rooms are warmed. In the watchman's chamber stands a clock with a dial-plate of twenty-four hours, and opposite every hour is a little plate, which can only be moved two minutes before it strikes. ”

“ The policeman will be pacing up and down the empty street, the gamekeeper will be watching in the lonely wood, the night watchman will be keeping guard in the deserted warehouse. But nearly all in that part of the world will be fast asleep, little dreaming of what is coming. ”