eleven o'clock
We lived at the top of the last house , and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night , like discharges of cannon , or breakings of a sea . When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows , I thought , raising my eyes to them as they rocked , that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse . Occasionally , the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into such a night ; and when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase , the staircase lamps were blown out ; and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows -LRB- opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain -RRB- , I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out , and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering , and that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain . I read with my watch upon the table , purposing to close my book at eleven o'clock . As I shut it , Saint Paul 's , and all the many church-clocks in the City -- some leading , some accompanying , some following -- struck that hour . The sound was curiously flawed by the wind ; and I was listening , and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it , when I heard a footstep on the stair . What nervous folly made me start , and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister , matters not .