midnight
Long hours after the face lay hushed in sleep above her heart , and while the long , soft breaths of slumber went and came , she lay staring out into the sinister blackness over the beloved , menaced head . Rain leaked through the tarpaulin over the ladder-hole , falling in heavy , sullen gouts and splashes on the beaten earth below as blood drips from a desperate wound . That image rose , and the blackness seemed all red -- red with those lines of fiery writing on it , smoking and crawling , flickering and blazing , climbing , and licking with thin , greenish tongues of hell-begotten flame . Then the midnight hour struck , and it was time to rise for Matins . Long after the Sisters had gone back to bed the Mother knelt on , a motionless figure wrestling in silent prayer before the silver Crucifix upon the wall . Dawn found her still kneeling . No ray of heavenly light had found her soul , that weltered in darkness , crying to One Who seemed not to hear .