midnight
I can hardly doubt that he regarded it as representing his own grave , to which in his happier moods he certainly looked forward as a place of final and impregnable refuge . As he lay thus , foreshadowing his burial , or rather his resurrection , a young canary which had flown from one of the cottages , flitted in with a golden shiver and flash , and alighted on his head . He took it gently in his hand and committed it to Phemy to carry home , with many injunctions against disclosing how it had been captured . His lonely days were spent in sleep , in tending his plants , or in contriving defences ; but in all weathers he wandered out at midnight , and roamed or rested among fields or rocks till the first signs of the breaking day , when he hurried like a wild creature to his den . Before long he had contrived an ingenious trap , or man spider web , for the catching of any human insect that might seek entrance at his window : the moment the invading body should reach a certain point , a number of lines would drop about him , in making his way through which he would straightway be caught by the barbs of countless fishhooks -- the whole strong enough at least to detain him until its inventor should have opened the trapdoor and fled . Of the new evil report abroad concerning him , nothing had as yet reached Malcolm . He read , and pondered , and wrestled with difficulties of every kind ; saw only a little of Lady Florimel , who , he thought , avoided him ; saw less of the marquis ; and , as the evenings grew longer , spent still larger portions of them with Duncan -- now and then reading to him , but oftener listening to his music or taking a lesson in the piper 's art .