But for the most part they paint well.
It is not alone the cloistral Gothic seclusion in which the Abbey hotel reposes that commends it to the wise: there is the further allurement of Long John.

Long John, or De Lange Jan, is the soaring tower of the Abbey church, now the Nieuwe Kerk.

So long have his nearly 300 feet dominated Middelburg--he was first built in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt in the sixteenth--that he has become more than a structure of bricks and copper: a thinking entity, a tutelary spirit at once the pride and the protector of the town.

His voice is heard more often than any belfry beneath whose shadow I have lain.

Holland, as we have seen, is a land of bells and carillons; nowhere in the world are the feet of Time so dogged; but Long John is the most faithful sleuth of all.