midnight
Doler , the husband , had fought in the civil war , and Mrs. Doler had been a cook in the Fairfax household ; but both had scrupulously sunk all Cromwellian associations since his Majesty 's return , and in boasting , as he often did boast , of having fought desperately and been left for dead at the battle of Brentford , Mr. Doler had been careful to suppress the fact that he was a hireling soldier of the Parliament . He would weep for the martyred King , and tell the story of his own wounds , until it is possible he had forgotten which side he had fought for , in remembering his personal prowess and sufferings . So far there had been disappointment as to the ghost . Sounds had been heard of a most satisfying grimness , during those midnight and early morning watchings ; rappings , and scrapings , and scratching on the wall , groanings and meanings , sighings and whisperings behind the wainscote ; but nothing spectral had been seen ; and Mrs. Doler had been severely reprimanded by her patrons and patronesses for the unwarrantable conduct of a spectre which she professed to have seen as often as she had fingers and toes . It was the phantom of a nun -- a woman of exceeding beauty , but white as the linen which banded her cheek and brow . There was a dark story of violated oaths , priestly sin , and the sleepless conscience of the dead , who could not rest even in that dreadful grave where the sinner had been immured alive , but must needs haunt the footsteps of the living , a wandering shade . Some there were who disbelieved in the traditions of that living grave , and who even went so far as to doubt the ghost ; but the spectre had an established repute of more than a century , was firmly believed in by all the children and old women of the neighbourhood , and had been written about by students of the unseen .