midnight
We were allowed to have no finger in this portentous pie . Mr. Watlin , with some small assistance from Mary Ellen , engineered the thing himself . We were sent to bed at the usual hour , and played at burglars on , and under , the bed , to while away the intervening hours . It must have been almost midnight when our hearts were made to beat in our throats by such an uproar in the scullery , as seemed to cleave the darkness like a thunderbolt . Giftie appeared to be choking in her effort to unloose , all at once , a torrent of ferocious barks . A window shook , glass broke , a shutter slammed . Then followed a moment of awful silence before she settled down to a methodical yapping .