hour and the state of
the weather, each in his own peculiar fashion, so that he could be
understood in his own beat, but nowhere else in the whole world.

When those who had been at parties came home at the usual respectable
hour of about ten o'clock, the lanterns reappeared in the streets.
When they fell in with a watchman, they wished him good night, the
young people asking the hour in order to tease him, the older ones
inquiring seriously about the direction of the wind.

After that the town became dark and silent. A drunken man would reel
from one side to the other until he fell down a cellar trap-door,
into the gutter, or into the sea. If by chance he stumbled upon the
watch, he soon found himself in the lock-up.

But it was not so easy to stumble upon the watch; for they had their
secret sleeping-corners, from which they only issued in case of
emergency, when they thought the time was come for crying out
something, or when the shuffling sound of leather boots was heard
approaching.

This was the watch which went the rounds, the fire watch of the town
consisting of four or five ancient watchmen, who had no voices left.

They wore their coat collars turned up, and their fur caps drawn
down, so that they could hardly notice a fire until it singed their
very beards. Nevertheless the town reposed in perfect security.

Perchance, however, some one would wake up and begin to think of the
quantity of rye which lay in the warehouses, or there came a series
of visions, clear and definite, such as appear to us in the darkness
of the night; first, an ember somewhere smouldering, spreading, and
then setting fire to the walls, seizing and enveloping the house, and
consuming the rye, salt, barrels, the store, and everything.

Then a shuffling noise of stiff leather boots and staves along the
pavement, all coming nearer every moment, and then passing out of
hearing.

Ah! the fire-watch going the rounds. All right, one can sleep now in
peace and comfort.

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.