eight o'clock
At once he had set to work upon it , with an enthusiasm that , with shut teeth , he declared would not be lacking in energy . The story would have to be written out of his business hours . That meant he would have to give up his evenings to it . But he had done this , and for nearly a week had settled himself to his task in the quiet corner of the club at eight o'clock , and held to it resolutely until twelve . The first two chapters had run off his pen with delightful ease . The third came harder ; the events and incidents of the story became confused and contradictory ; the character of Billy Isham obstinately refused to take the prominent place which Condy had designed for him ; and with the beginning of the fourth chapter , Condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties , the exasperating complications , the discouragements that begin anew with every paragraph , the obstacles that refuse to be surmounted , and all the pain , the labor , the downright mental travail and anguish that fall to the lot of the writer of novels . To write a short story with the end in plain sight from the beginning was an easy matter compared to the upbuilding , grain by grain , atom by atom , of the fabric of `` In Defiance of Authority . ''