midnight
He laid down the glimmering candle and paused . What a formidable object of occlusion , that door by which no one had entered for twenty years ! Geordie knew nothing of the old notion , that time fills secret and vacant recesses with terrified ghosts , frightened away from the haunts of men ; yet he had strange misgivings , which , being the instinctive suggestions of a rude mind , had a better chance for being true to nature . Perhaps the cold night air , to which his shirt offered small impediment , helped his tremulousness ; and that was not diminished when , on seizing the padlock , a scream from some drunken unfortunate in the Wynd struck on his ear and died away in the midnight silence . Nor was he free from the pangs of conscience , as he thought of the injunctions of guidwife Christian , and , more than these , the sanctions of morality and the laws ; but then he was not a thief , -- only an antiquary , searching into a dungeon of time-hallowed curiosities and relics . He laid his hard hand on the rusty padlock . He was accustomed to the screech of old bolts , but that now was as if it came from some of Vulcan 's chains whereby he caught the old thieves .