midnight
The warm night was a blue and moonlit glory of summer tranquillity and from the creek bottom came the full-throated chorus of the frogs . Back in the dark timber sounded the plaintive sweetness of the whippoorwills , and from everywhere drifted an intangible blending of fragrances . But Hump sat alone and morose in the house where no one dwelt but himself and his son -- save the neighbour woman who came in the daytime to cook and clean house for the widower . He sat there until midnight had passed and the moon was riding low to the west ; he was still sitting in the darkness that comes before dawn , and young Pete had not yet come . Then when even June could not make gracious that dismal hour that brings fog and reek before the first gray streaks the east , the old man heard a voice outside his door and rose heavily to answer it . He was a marked man , and should not have been so incautious , but in these days death held no threat for Hump Doane . It was life that brought him torture .