five o'clock
`` I will wait up for a while . '' Late in the night the girl heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen and bursts of loud but indistinct talking . Notwithstanding Harris 's late hours the household was early astir the following morning . At five o'clock Jim was at work in the stables , feeding , rubbing down , and harnessing his horses , while Allan and his father walked to the engine , where they built a fresh fire and made some minor repairs . Even at this early hour the sun shone brightly , its rays mellowing in a sheen of ground-mist that enveloped the prairie , but there is a tang in the Manitoba morning air even in midsummer , and the men walked briskly through the crisp stubble . A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails , and the cows , comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth , rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach . A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney ; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage ; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens , and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters .