midnight
`` We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent . '' `` The people who get robbed think us both , '' said the officer ; and taking his hat , left the office , and began to trudge slowly down the street . The orderly people had mostly retired to their homes . The midnight ghouls from the deep wynds and closes were beginning to form their gossiping clusters ; the perambulators had begun their courses ; and fast youths from the precincts of the College or the New Town were resuming their search for sprees , or determined to make them . There were among them many clients of our officer , whom he knew , and had hopes of at some future day ; but now he surveyed them with the eye of one whose occupation for the time was gone . His sadness was of the colour of Jacques ' , but there was a difference : the one wove out of his melancholy golden verses in the forest of Arden ; our hero could not draw out of his even silver plate in the dens of Edinburgh . He had come to the Tron Kirk , and hesitated whether , after all , he should renounce his hunt for the night -- true to the peculiarity of this species of men , whose game are wretched and wicked beings , always less or more between them and the wind 's eye , and therefore always stimulating to pursuit ; but again he resolved upon home , or , rather , his heavy eyes and worn-out spirits resolved him , in spite of himself , and he turned south , in which direction his residence was .