midnight
Fancy also played her usual sport with him . He now thought he heard the well-worn damask nightgown of the deceased usurer rustle ; anon , that he heard the slaughtered bravo draw up his leg , the boot scratching the floor as if he was about to rise ; and again he deemed he heard the footsteps and the whisper of the returned ruffian under the window from which he had lately escaped . To face the last and most real danger , and to parry the terrors which the other class of feelings were like to impress upon him , Nigel went to the window , and was much cheered to observe the light of several torches illuminating the street , and followed , as the murmur of voices denoted , by a number of persons , armed , it would seem , with firelocks and halberds , and attendant on Hildebrod , who -LRB- not in his fantastic office of duke , but in that which he really possessed of bailiff of the liberty and sanctuary of Whitefriars -RRB- was on his way to inquire into the crime and its circumstances . It was a strange and melancholy contrast to see these debauchees , disturbed in the very depth of their midnight revel , on their arrival at such a scene as this . They stared on each other , and on the bloody work before them , with lack-lustre eyes ; staggered with uncertain steps over boards slippery with blood ; their noisy brawling voices sunk into stammering whispers ; and , with spirits quelled by what they saw , while their brains were still stupefied by the liquor which they had drunk , they seemed like men walking in their sleep . Old Hildebrod was an exception to the general condition . That seasoned cask , however full , was at all times capable of motion , when there occurred a motive sufficiently strong to set him a-rolling .