midnight
With all these suggestive objects round me , aided by the wild stories those awful country-boys that came to live in our service brought with them ; -- of contracts written in blood and left out over night , not to be found the next morning , -LRB- removed by the Evil One , who takes his nightly round among our dwellings , and filed away for future use , -RRB- -- of dreams coming true , -- of death-signs , -- of apparitions , no wonder that my imagination got excited , and I was liable to superstitious fancies . Jeremy Bentham 's logic , by which he proved that he could n't possibly see a ghost is all very well-in the day-time . All the reason in the world will never get those impressions of childhood , created by just such circumstances as I have been telling , out of a man 's head . That is the only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which I watch my little neighbor , and the obstinacy with which I lie awake whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight . But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for the present . You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones , and how I got my fancy full of material images , -- faces , heads , figures , muscles , and so forth , -- in such a way that I should have no chance in this number to gratify any curiosity you may feel , if I had the means of so doing . Indeed , I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time .