midnight
As it had not mended properly he could do little work and limped painfully about . To the men of Bidwell he was known as something of a wit , and in the winter he went to town every afternoon to stand in the stores and tell the Rabelaisian stories for which he was famous ; but when spring came he became restlessly active , and in his own house and on the farm , became a tyrant . During the time of the cabbage setting he drove his sons and daughters like slaves . When in the evening the moon came up , he made them go back to the fields immediately after supper and work until midnight . They went in sullen silence , the girls to limp slowly along dropping the plants out of baskets carried on their arms , and the boys to crawl after them and set the plants . In the half darkness the little group of humans went slowly up and down the long fields . Ezra hitched a horse to a wagon and brought the plants from the seed-bed behind the barn .