three o’clock
Oh ! my God , my God , I shall go mad ! '' Indeed I , who watched him , believe that this would have been so , or else his brain must have burst beneath its shock of sorrow , had not nature been kind to him and plunged him back into stupor . In this he lay long , until well on into the morrow indeed , or rather the day , for by now it was three o'clock , when the doctor came to take out the pistol ball and set his shattered bone . For , as it chanced , a doctor , and a clever one , had been sent for from the dorp to visit the wife of a neighbour who lay sick not more than twenty miles away , and we were able to summon him . Indeed but for this man 's skill , the sleeping medicines he gave him to quiet his mind , and , above all , a certain special mercy which shall be told of in its place , I think that Ralph would have died . As it was , seven long weeks went by before he could sit upon a horse .