midnight
He had a good kerosene lamp , and at nights when he was not too tired , he read . On his visits to the city he usually had an eye for book bargains , and thus his board shelving came to be quite a little library . He had no method in his collecting , no course of connected study . At one time he would leisurely read one of Howell 's easy-going novels , at another time he would be kept wide-eyed until midnight with `` Lorna Doone '' or with `` Ben Hur . '' Dorian had heard of Darwin , of Huxley , of Ingersol and of Tom Payne , but he had never read anything but selections from these writers . Now he obtained a copy of the `` Origin of Species '' and a book by Ingersol . These he read carefully .