midnight
The night set in gusty and tempestuous , and the moon was all girt with ragged clouds . The wind blew in melancholy gusts , sobbing and sighing over the moor , and setting all the gorse bushes agroaning . From time to time a little sputter of rain pattered up against the window-pane . I sat until near midnight , glancing over the fragment on immortality by Iamblichus , the Alexandrian platonist , of whom the Emperor Julian said that he was posterior to Plato in time but not in genius . At last , shutting up my book , I opened my door and took a last look at the dreary fell and still more dreary sky . As I protruded my head , a swoop of wind caught me and sent the red ashes of my pipe sparkling and dancing through the darkness . At the same moment the moon shone brilliantly out from between two clouds and I saw , sitting on the hillside , not two hundred yards from my door , the man who called himself the surgeon of Gaster Fell .