midnight
` He possessed his riches one hundred years ago , when people could be lost easily . He had heard who the youth was , from hearing of the search that was made after him ; but , it died away , and the youth was forgotten . ` The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot , when there was a great thunder-storm over this place . It broke at midnight , and roared until morning . The first intelligence he heard from his old serving-man that morning , was , that the tree had been struck by Lightning . ` It had been riven down the stem , in a very surprising manner , and the stem lay in two blighted shafts : one resting against the house , and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap . The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth , and there stopped .