midnight
The house cried out to me for help . In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there , that impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of the place . Let me at once set down that this is not the story of a haunted house . It is , or was , a beleaguered house ; strangely besieged as was Prague in the old legend , when a midnight army of spectres unfurled pale banners and encamped around the city walls . Of course , I did not know all this , the day that my real-estate agent brought his little car to a stop before the dilapidated farm . I believed the house only appealed to be lived in ; for deliverance from the destroying work of neglect and time . A spring rain was whispering down from a gray sky , dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter like timid footsteps hurrying by , yet even in the storm the house did not look dreary .