oned as stretching to the water's edge, and formed the usual and more
direct communication between this sort of court and other parts of the
establishment.

Late on a fine autumn afternoon of the year 1652, some little time after
the battle of Worcester, a young man, musket on arm, paced up and down
this inner court as sentinel. His dress, which partook of the military
uniform of the times, without precisely belonging to any particular
regiment, and the finer cloth of some parts of his attire, which was of a
far finer texture than was customary upon the person of a common soldier,
proved that he was one of the many volunteers who had enrolled themselves
among the troops of the Parliamentary army, and probably of gentler birth
than might be generally found employed in such humble military functions.
Loose boots of so great a size towards their upper part, that each might
have been imagined to contain, at least, half a calf-skin, mounted towards
his large hose of plain but good material. A tuck or rapier of some length
was girded round his loins; a corselet, with bandoleer slung around it,
covered the front of his buff-coat; and a morion, destitute of all feather
or ornament, concealed for the greater part his hair, closely clipped in
compliance with the puritanical fashions of the times, the colour of
which, however, might be divined by the fairness of the young mustache
that curled lovingly about his upper lip.

Sometimes, as he paced backwards and forwards upon his lonesome watch, the
eye of the young man rested for a while upon the dull swampy landscape,
the chief beauty of which, at the moment, was a slight haze that hovered
over stream and marsh, and stunted willow and distant hill, tinged with a
golden hue from the slanting rays of the sun; the only living sights and
sounds of which, were busy flights of gnats whirling up and down with
drowsy hum; an occasional frog, that splashed from the opposite shore into
the water with an uneasy croak; and one solitary fisherman, who, after
having drawn up his boat among the rushes on the river's bank, near the
opening upon the "broad," and left his line to float along the lazy
stream, seemed to have lain down in his broad flat-bottomed punt, to sleep
at his ease. Sometimes he paused to scrutinize more earnestly the heavy
pile of the old tower, to guard all egress from which might be supposed,
from his periodical examinations of its walls, to be the peculiar duty of
his post.