midnight
The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing , a freakish and impish wind though not a vicious one . One might imagine it animated by those sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church used to call the monkeys of God . Every now and then a great deluge of piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and tumbling across the face of the sky , and in and out of these swirling masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like pin-points . Such street lights as we have being extinguished at midnight , the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow , the gardens that edged them were debatable ground , full of grotesque silhouettes , backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all profoundly asleep . As for us , we also were shadows , whose feet were soundless on the sandy sidewalks . We moved in the dark like travelers in the City of Dreadful Night . And so we came at last to the red-brick bank , approaching it by the long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it .