This was a little past midnight.

The troubled midnight.

While he had not expected that the trail of the mysterious midnight woman would lead to the fiancée of the dead man, the sudden dissipation of that as a clue rather threw him off his balance.

Reader, look at the preceding listmark the unfeeling barbarity with which their masters and mistresses describe the struggles and perils of sundered husbands and wives, parents and children, in their weary midnight travels through forests and rivers, with torn limbs and breaking hearts, seeking the embraces of each other's love.

For in the ancient days when savage foes Distressed the kingdom with their heathen craft, One mystic midnight came a messenger Of God to Titurel, and gave to him The Holy Grail, the vessel lustrous pure, Wherein the crimson wine blushed rosy-red At that Last Supper of the feast of love; Wherein the later wine of His own blood Was caught and cherished from the cruel Cross.

It runs (text of 1797): As when a child on some long winter's night Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell; Or of those hags, who at the witching time Of murky midnight ride the air sublime, And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell: Cold Horror drinks its blood!

The man who has sworn by eyes as black as a stormy midnight and raven hair generally unites himself to the most insipid thing in blondes, and the idolater of golden locks takes to wife some frizzy-haired West Indian with an unmistakable dip of the tar-brush.

But the best is, I have a charm about me, that will lay him yet ere midnight.

When a mana young mancomes face to face with murder for the first time, making its acquaintance on a freezing December midnight and in a lonely spot, he is not to be blamed if his mental equilibrium is destroyed.

Thou must know that I had comrades, four in number; Of my comrades four the first was gloomy midnight; The second was a steely dudgeon dagger; The third it was a swift and speedy courser; The fourth of my companions was a bent bow; My messengers were furnace-harden'd arrows.

My lady, lover, may never be mine In the same sweet way that thine is thine, My lady and I may never stand By the holy altar hand in hand, My lady and I may never rest Through the golden midnight breast to breast, Nor share long days of happy light Sweet moving in each other's sight: Yea, even must we ever miss The honey of the chastest kiss.

Ah, holy midnight of the soul, When stars alone are high; When winds are dead, or at their goal, And sea-waves only sigh!

And oft the lonely midnight heard her moan Of hopes foregone, that women hold most dear.

It was a lovely moon-lighted midnight when they set out, the four of them, to walk from the gate across the park to the Old House.

And then, of course, he fell in love with her, for she leaned on his piano and improvised flatteries across the strings to him and turned full on him the luminous midnight of her ox-eyed beauty.

They buried him at the mirk midnight, When the dew fell cold and still, When the aspin grey forgot to play, And the mist clung to the hill.

At last, in the moonless midnight, The summoning angel came, Severe in his pity, touching The house with fingers of flame.

They forgot the passing of the hours and till near midnight were as those gone to a strange country.

"He told me," continued Horace, "that he was passing through here late last nightnear midnight, he saidand that he saw Lavina Richmond standing just about where you stand now.

"] When the night was exceeding coldand one who has not felt it can hardly imagine the bitter, killing intensity of a northern midnight in Februarythe wolves, instead of going away, would wait under the tree in which the lynx had taken refuge, and the silent, appalling death-watch began.

The only change I now allowed myself was an occasional midnight stroll up Huested Street.

And such a pity, and a wringing of the heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that ominous midnight.

Thus the mad night hours passed until dawn came to bring the revels to a close; or until the Regent would sally forth with a few chosen comrades on a midnight ramble to other haunts of pleasure in the capitalthe lower the better.

It holds the blood of sun and star, And all pure essences that are: No fruit so high on the heavenly vine, Whose golden hanging clusters shine On the far-off shadowy midnight hills, But some sweet influence it distils That slideth down the silvery rills.

And oft in the sleepless midnight We listened and were afraid; And daily came the tidings Of folly and crime and woe, And one by one kept dying The friends of long ago.