midnight
In spite of himself , sleep stole on him twice , and he awakened each time to find an hour was gone . It was a night of pouring rain . Great drops beat on the little window , a gargoyle poured a noisy stream of water , and a loud sea cried off the land and broke upon the outer edge of the rock of Doom . A loud sea and ominous , and it was hard for Count Victor , in that welter of midnight voices , to hear the call of an owl , yet it came to him by and by , as he expected , with its repetition . And then the flageolet , with its familiar and baffling melody , floating on a current of the wind that piped about the castle vents and sobbed upon the stairs . He opened his door , looked into the depths that fell with mouldering steps into the basement and upwards to the flight where the Baron had been going . Whether he should carry his inquiry further or retire and shut his door again with a forced indifference to these perplexing events was but the toss of a coin .