midnight
Colonel John got to his saddle , and they trotted on . Notwithstanding which it was late in the afternoon when they approached the town of Tralee . In those days it was a town much ruined . The grim castle of the Desmonds , scene of the midnight murder which had brought so many woes on Ireland , still elbowed the grey Templars Cloister , and looked down , as it frowned across the bay , on the crumbling aisles and squalid graves of the Abbey . To Bale , as he scanned the dark pile , it was but a keep -- a mere nothing beside Marienburg or Stettin -- rising above the hovels of an Irish town . But to the Irishman it stood for many a bitter memory and many a crime , besides that murder of a guest which will never be forgotten . The Colonel sighed as he gazed .