six in the evening
According to his own story , the boat had tipped over when the moon was behind a cloud and he had lost all trace of his wife after her first struggle in the water . But people laughed at this story , and as for myself , I wondered who was the creature I had seen in the orchard , mixed up with the queer shadows and running from tree to tree like a frightened ape . Little knowing what was to happen , I wondered whether I should ever see John Chalmers , the accused man , before the law had made way with him . I never doubted that the law would hesitate , till the day the Judge came home to dinner at six in the evening and told me that the case had been in the jury 's hands for three hours already . How well I remember the long rays of the sun slanting over the slope , the songs of the wild birds that had sneaked into the trees along the green back yards of our dusty street , and how it came to me then that the world was too beautiful to be befouled by the hates of little men , whose appetites were no more important than the appetites of the caterpillars eating the green foliage . But I could see the hates of men reflected in the Judge 's face . `` Surely they would not let him go , sir ? ''