midnight
There was something in human nature which made a man abandon caution and try to live up to the claims made for him by his parents at birth . It must be bad , Moonson thought . It must be bad if I ca n't control the trembling of my hands , the pounding of the blood at my temples . I am like a child shut up alone in the dark , hearing rats scurrying in a closet thick with cobwebs and the tapping of a blind man 's cane on a deserted street at midnight . _ Tap , tap , tap _ -- nearer and nearer through the darkness . How soon would the rats be swarming out , blood-fanged and wholly vicious ? How soon would the cane strike ?