midnight
He did so fear , and he feared mightily , constantly and unendingly . That fear , along with the behavior which became from that night thenceforward part and parcel of him , made Dudley Stackpole as one set over and put apart from his fellows . Neither by daytime nor by nighttime was he thereafter to know darkness . Never again was he to see the twilight fall or face the blackness which comes before the dawning or take his rest in the cloaking , kindly void and nothingness of the midnight . Before the dusk of evening came , in midafternoon sometimes , of stormy and briefened winter days , or in the full radiance of the sun 's sinking in the summertime , he was within doors lighting the lights which would keep the darkness beyond his portals and hold at bay a gathering gloom into which from window or door he would not look and dared not look . There were trees about his house , cottonwoods and sycamores and one noble elm branching like a lyre . He chopped them all down and had the roots grubbed out .