midnight
did n't you hear something move in the passage just then ? '' Whereupon Jane and Mary would spring to their feet , and , with pallid faces , starting eyes , and blanched lips , cling convulsively to each other , convinced that at last their unspoken fears were about to be dreadfully realised . It will naturally be supposed that these _ seances _ would have a dreadfully trying effect upon my infantile nerves ; but , strangely enough , they did not . I never looked beneath my cot with the expectation of discovering a midnight assassin ; for , in the first place , the outer doors of the house were always kept so carefully closed that I did not see how such an individual could well get in ; and , in the second place , admitting , for argument 's sake , the possibility of his effecting an entrance , I did not for a moment believe he would give himself the wholly unnecessary trouble of murdering a little boy , or girl either , for that matter . Then , as to the ghosts , though it never occurred to me to doubt their existence , I entirely failed to understand why people should be afraid of them . I felt that , in regarding these beings as objects of dread and apprehension , the housemaid , the cook , and in fact everybody who took this view of them , entirely misunderstood them , and were doing the poor shadows a most grievous injustice . My own experience of ghosts led me to the conclusion that , so far from their being inimical to mankind , they were distinctly benign .