midnight
` Father would have advised me to give up all this idiocy , ' Aratov said aloud , and he took up a book . He could not , however , read for long , and feeling a sort of heaviness all over , he went to bed earlier than usual , in the full conviction that he would fall asleep at once . And so it happened ... but his hopes of a quiet night were not realised . It had not struck midnight , when he had an extraordinary and terrifying dream . He dreamed that he was in a rich manor-house of which he was the owner . He had lately bought both the house and the estate attached to it . And he kept thinking , ` It 's nice , very nice now , but evil is coming ! '