The French and English coasts lay distinctly visible in the strange starlight, the white cliffs of Dover resembling a long gabled block of marble houses.

Both shores showed a long straight row of lamps.

Israel seemed standing in the middle of the crossing of some wide stately street in London.

Presently a breeze sprang up, and ere long our adventurer disembarked at his destined port, and directly posted on for Brentford.
The following afternoon, having gained unobserved admittance into the house, according to preconcerted signals, he was sitting in Squire Woodcock's closet, pulling off his boots and delivering his dispatches.
Having looked over the compressed tissuey sheets, and read a line particularly addressed to himself, the Squire, turning round upon Israel, congratulated him upon his successful mission, placed some refreshment before him, and apprised him that, owing to certain suspicious symptoms in the neighborhood, he (Israel) must now remain concealed in the house for a day or two, till an answer should be ready for Paris.
It was a venerable mansion, as was somewhere previously stated, of a wide and rambling disorderly spaciousness, built, for the most part, of weather-stained old bricks, in the goodly style called Elizabethan.

As without, it was all dark russet bricks, so within, it was nothing but tawny oak panels.
"Now, my good fellow," said the Squire, "my wife has a number of guests, who wander from room to room, having the freedom of the house.
So I shall have to put you very snugly away, to guard against any chance of discovery." So saying, first locking the door, he touched a spring nigh the open fire-place, whereupon one of the black sooty stone jambs of the chimney started ajar, just like the marble gate of a tomb.