One by one the lights in the Glen went out . It was a very dark night , with a cloudy sky , and a raw east wind that was cold in spite of the calendar . Far away on the horizon was the low dim lustre of the Charlottetown lights . The wind wailed and sighed in the old fir-trees . Mr. Alec Davis ' tall monument gleamed whitely through the gloom . The willow beside it tossed long , writhing arms spectrally . At times , the gyrations of its boughs made it seem as if the monument were moving , too . Carl curled himself up on the tombstone with his legs tucked under him . It was n't precisely pleasant to hang them over the edge of the stone . Just suppose -- just suppose -- bony hands should reach up out of Mr. Pollock 's grave under it and clutch him by the ankles . That had been one of Mary Vance 's cheerful speculations one time when they had all been sitting there . It returned to haunt Carl now . He did n't believe those things ; he did n't even really believe in Henry Warren 's ghost . As for Mr. Pollock , he had been dead sixty years , so it was n't likely he cared who sat on his tombstone now . But there is something very strange and terrible in being awake when all the rest of the world is asleep . You are alone then with nothing but your own feeble personality to pit against the mighty principalities and powers of darkness . Carl was only ten and the dead were all around him -- and he wished , oh , he wished that the clock would strike twelve . Would it NEVER strike twelve ? Surely Aunt Martha must have forgotten to wind it . And then it struck eleven -- only eleven !
He must stay yet another hour XXXXX that grim place .
At around by in of on over that through with