1 a.m.
Bump . I sat up in bed and listened intently . It seemed to me as if someone with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of the wall . `` Burglars , '' I said to myself -LRB- one assumes , as a matter of course , that everything happening in this world after 1 a.m. is due to burglars -RRB- , and I reflected what a curiously literal , but at the same time slow and cumbersome , method of housebreaking they had adopted . The bumping continued irregularly , yet uninterruptedly . My bed was by the window . I reached out my hand and drew aside a corner of the curtain .