night about twelve o'clock
`` How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such nonsense passes my comprehension , '' said she . `` It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe in ghosts , '' said the minister gently , and Sophia Gill felt a certain feminine contentment in hearing him . The minister was a child to her ; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment , and yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby exalted . That night about twelve o'clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber . He had been sitting up until that hour preparing his sermon . He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand , opened the door of the southwest chamber , and essayed to enter . He might as well have essayed to enter the solid side of a house .