midnight
I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse last summer . The roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on my bed . There was no poetry in THAT . I had to get up in the ` mirk midnight ' and chivy round to pull the bedstead out of the drip -- and it was one of those solid , old-fashioned beds that weigh a ton -- more or less . And then that drip-drop , drip-drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces . You 've no idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night . It sounds like ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing .