midnight
He was led into the long room of the workshop , where various patterns of muskets , rifles , pistols , and swords were stars , crosses , wedges , over the walls , and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied the middle place , on a block . Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war were common on those days among a people beginning to sit with habitual snugness at the festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers . Fleetwood had not been on the side of the banqueting citizens , though his country 's journals and her feasted popular wits made a powerful current to whelm opposition . But the appearance of the woman , his wife , here , her head surrounded by destructive engines in the form of trophy , and the knowledge that this woman bearing his name designed to be out at the heels of a foreign army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals , inspired him to reprobate men 's bad old game as heartily as good sense does in the abstract , and as derisively as it is the way with comfortable islanders before the midnight trumpet-notes of panic have tumbled them to their legs . He took his chair ; sickened . He was the next moment taking Carinthia 's impression of Chillon , compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for shapes of strength in the mould of grace , over whose firm build a flicker of agility seems to run . For the young soldier 's figure was visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind 's movement .