midnight
`` Evil spirits were with her , suggesting many desperate thoughts ; at length they infused a deadly , horrible temptation to a deed of self-destruction so ghastly that its discovery should appal the family , the parish , and the whole world ; that should cover her tormentors with shame , reproach and infamy . `` She sprang up from her bed and went to search in the drawer of a little old wooden stand , until she found a half page of note paper and a bit of lead pencil . `` She took them out and wrote to her persecutors , saying that she was going to throw herself -- not into the sea , nor from a precipice , because both earth and sea give up their dead -- but into the quicksands , which never give up anything ; they , her tormentors , should never even see again the body they had bruised and torn and degraded ; and she prayed that the Lord would ever deal by them as they had dealt with her . `` It must have been near midnight when she heard a tap at her window , so light that at first she thought it was made by a large raindrop ; but presently her name was softly called by a voice that she recognized . Then she understood it all , and her thoughts of the quicksands vanished . `` Her room was a small one in the rear of the house , immediately over the back kitchen , and her back window opened upon the roof of the wood shed behind the kitchen . She went and hoisted the window , and there on the roof of the wood shed stood Alfred Whyte .