Bramwell Olcott Bartine

John Bartine sits by the fire and refuses, with a mysterious reluctance, to answer so simple a question as the time of night, until his guest's impudence forces the story out of him. The watch has been in his family for three generations, ever since his great-grandfather Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a Colonial Tory, was arrested one night by Washington's rebels and marched into a darkness that swallowed him forever. Weeks later the watch was found on the porch, wrapped in paper bearing the name of the old man's only son, and Bartine is wearing it still.