midnight
A stern , a sad , a darkly meditative , a distrustful , if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that fearful dream . On the Sabbath day , when the congregation were singing a holy psalm , he could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain . When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence , and , with his hand on the open Bible , of the sacred truths of our religion , and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths , and of future bliss or misery unutterable , then did Goodman Brown turn pale , dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers . Often , waking suddenly at midnight , he shrank from the bosom of Faith ; and at morning or eventide , when the family knelt down at prayer , he scowled and muttered to himself , and gazed sternly at his wife , and turned away . And when he had lived long , and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse , followed by Faith , an aged woman , and children and grandchildren , a goodly procession , besides neighbors not a few , they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone , for his dying hour was gloom . RAPPACCINI 'S DAUGHTER -LSB- From the Writings of Aubepine . -RSB- We do not remember to have seen any translated specimens of the productions of M. de l'Aubepine -- a fact the less to be wondered at , as his very name is unknown to many of his own countrymen as well as to the student of foreign literature .