midnight
The manner of my lighting on it was this . I was travelling towards London out of the North , intending to stop by the way , to look at the house . My health required a temporary residence in the country ; and a friend of mine who knew that , and who had happened to drive past the house , had written to me to suggest it as a likely place . I had got into the train at midnight , and had fallen asleep , and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky , and had fallen asleep again , and had woke up again to find the night gone , with the usual discontented conviction on me that I had n't been to sleep at all ; -- upon which question , in the first imbecility of that condition , I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me . That opposite man had had , through the night -- as that opposite man always has -- several legs too many , and all of them too long . In addition to this unreasonable conduct -LRB- which was only to be expected of him -RRB- , he had had a pencil and a pocket-book , and had been perpetually listening and taking notes . It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage , and I should have resigned myself to his taking them , under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life , if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened .