Hi and welcome back to Nighting Night, bedtime stories to keep you awake. I'm your host Raviachaudri. Now this week's tale brings us the assurance that it's

okay to be afraid because even the bravest of heroes aren't immune from horror. About the end of the American War, when the officers of Lord Cornwallis's army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others who had been made prisoners during

the impolitic and ill-fated controversy were returning to their own country to relate their

adventures and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was amongst them a general officer,

to whom Miss S gave the name of Brown, but merely as I understood to save the inconvenience

of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative.

He was an officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family and attainments.

Some business had carried General Brown upon a tour through the Western

counties, when in the conclusion of a morning stage he found himself in the vicinity of a small

country town which presented a scene of uncommon beauty and of a small country town which presented a scene of uncommon beauty and of a character peculiarly English.

The little town with its stately church whose tower bore testimony to the devotion of ages long past lay amidst pasture and cornfields of small extent,

but bounded and divided with hedge-road timber of great age and size.

There were few marks of modern improvement.

The environs of the place intimidated neither the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty.

The houses were old but in good repair, and the beautiful little river murmured

freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by a dam nor bordered by a towing path.

Upon a gentle eminence nearly a mile to the southward of the town were seen amongst many venerable

oaks and tangled thickets, the turrets of a castle, as old as the wars of York and Lancaster, but which

seemed to have received important alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her successors.

It had not been a place of great size, but whatever

accommodation if formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be

obtained within its walls. At least such was the inference which General Brown drew from observing

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