midnight
Thady , however , was the blackest looking of the family . Everything was dark within his breast . He thought of the ruffians with whom he had leagued himself ; and though previously he had only considered them as poor , hard used , somewhat lawless characters , they now appeared to him everything that was iniquitous and bad . Secret murder was their object -- black , foul , midnight murder -- and he was sworn , or soon would be sworn , not only to help them , but to lead them on . What he had already done might hang him . He felt his life to be in the power of each of those blackguards , with whom , in wretched equality , he had been drinking on the previous evening . And what had led him to this ?