Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Watches of the Night is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on March 25th 1887; in book form, first in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888; and in the many subsequent editions of that collection. It is one of the "Tales" which deals with the tense, enclosed society of the British in India, and the levels of gossip and malice that could be engendered therein.