midnight
He might sleep in peace after all ; things were going to turn out less bad than he had feared . Tired as he was , however , try as he might , sleep would not come that night ; an unaccountable feeling of restlessness and of vague apprehension had him in its grip . Hour after hour he lay , listening irritably to the snoring of his fellow-shepherd , Borthwick , starting nervously at every scraping of rat or creak of timber . At last , long after midnight , he rose and looked out . The wind had fallen , but snow still fell ; there was nothing abnormal in the night , and the weather might have been described as merely `` seasonable . '' But away in the northern sky , low down , appeared a strange break in the mist , such as in all his experience he had never before seen . And it came to his mind that the previous day , when on his homeward way he had `` looked in '' at his uncle 's house , the old man had predicted the coming of a violent storm , which would surely spring from that quarter in which should first be seen a phenomenon such as that on which Hogg was now looking .