midnight
On their vanishing shadows Mr. Pimble clappered his heelless slippers , with the long skirts of his palm-figured wrapper streaming on the air behind him ; like the grim ghost of manhood pursuing its flying aggressors . Then Florence , like a beam of light , danced past on the arm of Edgar , and a merry , laughing group followed quickly in their rear , among which we recognized the tall , portly form of Major Howard , smiling benignly on the happy faces around him . But we looked in vain for the thin , bowed figure of his grief-stricken sister . There were two willow-shaded graves in the grass-grown church-yard , and o'er them bent the spectre-like form of the Hermit of the Cedars , his gray locks moistened by the falling night-dews , and his pale face turned upward to the midnight stars with an expression of mournful resignation . As the clock in the ivy-hung steeple tower rang forth its echoing chimes on the odorous air , we cast one glance toward the swiftly-vanishing groups , and silently turned away . Cold and bitter on our long-wrapped senses strike the harsh , blunt-edged realities of every-day existence . The multiplied images which but yesterday peopled our brain and thronged on our notice , have `` departed thence , to return no more . ''