midnight
On the Christmas Eve of ` fifty-five there was a time of excitement in the second parallel before the Malakoff ; and this was not because of any special danger of the siege or any threatened imminent assault , but simply and merely because of the late slaughter of a pig of tender age whose screams had come up from the Turkish camp about the witching hour of midnight . Amongst the war-worn , ragged , bronzed and bearded crowd is that identical Paddy who reckoned his uniform the livery of his degradation when he first assumed it . He is as ragged as any Connemara harvester by this time , and as tanned , as plucky , and as impudent in the face of death and hardship as he knows how to stick ; and it is he who has brought the news which flutters the spirits of the score of men who are huddled in the trench together , right beneath the gaping embrasure of the Russian guns . It was near midnight , and an extreme languor of fatigue had fallen upon all men when the tattered slip of Hibernian nobility crawled up on hands and knees so as not to expose himself against the sky-line , and dropped into his own place in the trench . He dropped with his feet on the stomach of Sergeant Polson Jervase , who denounced his clumsiness in fair set terms , which came as pat to his lips as if he had rehearsed them for a year . ` Is that you ? ' said Paddy .