midnight
And every now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular London attorney ; sometimes it was a budget of evidence , and sometimes only a string of queries . To-night , to the awful diapason of the storm -- he was penning one of these -- the fruit of a tedious study of many papers and letters , tied up in bundles by his desk , all of them redolent of ominous or fearful associations . I do n't know why it is the hours fly with such a strange celerity in the monotony and solitude of such nightwork . But Mervyn was surprised , as many a one similarly occupied has been , on looking at his watch , to find that it was now long past midnight ; so he threw himself back in his chair with a sigh , and thought how vainly his life was speeding away , and heard , with a sort of wonder , how mad was the roar of the storm without , while he had quietly penned his long rescript undisturbed . The wild bursts of supernatural fury and agony which swell and mingle in a hurricane , I dare say , led his imagination a strange aërial journey through the dark . Now it was the baying of hell hounds , and the long shriek of the spirit that flies before them . Anon it was the bellowing thunder of an ocean , and the myriad voices of shipwreck .