midnight
It was from a dream of future greatness , or what seemed to him as such , wherein he saw himself wealthy and powerful , surrounded with luxury and with the ministers of every pleasure , that he was suddenly and sharply awakened by a trifling incident -- the snapping of a dead twig in the copse hard by . In an instant the glittering gossamer of thought was swept aside , and the young fellow was all ear and eye . The wind had dropped for some time , and the silence was intense ; that solemn hush seemed to pervade the forest which some poet has attributed to the cessation of spiritual life , as though the haunters of the glade were _ waiting _ for the resumption of their occupations until the interloping mortal should pass by . Nothing stirred , or , if so , it was motion without sound , as when the full-feathered owl slid softly through the midnight air above him . Not a dead leaf fell ; and where the leaves had fallen there they lay . How was it , then , that a twig broke ? The deer were couched ; the pheasants sat at roost , their heads beneath that splendid coverlet , their wing ; and though there were creeping things which even midnight did not woo to rest in that vast wilderness , Yorke had imbibed enough of forest lore to know that the noise which he had heard was produced by none of these .