midnight
-LSB- Footnote : Jaines . Quoted by Auchinleck . -RSB- Of the valuable library , which had cost between five and six hundred pounds sterling , scarcely a book escaped . Late into the night burned the fires , reddening the midnight heavens with the lurid flames of comfortable homesteads , well - filled barns and is stacks of grain . Herds of affrighted cattle rushed wildly over the adjacent meadows , the kine lowing piteously with distended udders for the accustomed hands of their milkers at eventide . Of the hundred and fifty dwellings fired , only two or three escaped by accident , one of which still remains ; and four hundred women and children were left to wander in the snow or seek the temporary shelter of some remote farm-house or Indian wigwam in the woods . Some wandered for days in the adjacent dismal `` Black Swamp , '' feeding on frost-bitten cranberries , or on a casual rabbit or ground-hog .