midnight
As I get deeper into this business I find my interest in it growing day by day -- an interest _ sui generis _ , apart from all prospect of gain -- apart even from the consideration that by means of this investigation I am obtaining a living which is earned _ almost _ honestly ; for if I tell an occasional falsehood or act an occasional hypocrisy , I am no worse than a secretary of legation of an Old Bailey barrister . The pleasure which I now take in the progress of this research is a pleasure that is new to me : it is the stimulus which makes a breakneck gallop across dreary fields gridironed with dykes and stone walls so delicious to the sportsman ; it is the stimulus which makes the task of the mathematician sweet to him when he devotes laborious days to the solution of an abstruse problem ; it is the stimulus that sustains the Indian trapper against all the miseries of cold and hunger , foul weather , and aching limbs ; it is the fever of the chase -- that inextinguishable fire which , once lighted in the human breast , is not to be quenched until the hunt is ended . I should like to earn three thousand pounds ; but if I were to be none the richer for my trouble , I think , now that I am so deeply involved in this business , I should still go on . I want to fathom the mystery of that midnight interment at Dewsdale ; I want to know the story of that Mary Haygarth who lies under the old yew-tree at Spotswold , and for whose loss some one sorrowed without hope of consolation . Was that a widower 's commonplace , I wonder , and did the unknown mourner console himself ultimately with a new wife ? Who knows ? as my Italian friends say when they discuss the future of France .