one
o’clock at night
And why the light was there I do n't know to this day . The second terror I experienced was excited by a circumstance no less trivial ... . I was returning from a romantic interview . It was one o'clock at night , the time when nature is buried in the soundest , sweetest sleep before the dawn . That time nature was not sleeping , and one could not call the night a still one . Corncrakes , quails , nightingales , and woodcocks were calling , crickets and grasshoppers were chirruping . There was a light mist over the grass , and clouds were scurrying straight ahead across the sky near the moon .