midnight
He was thinking that this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life . If one feeling of delicacy , one tender sentiment , one impulse of humanity remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him ; it only required this cruel torture to crush it forever . In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the hands of Paul Ritson , the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep . It was after midnight when they reached Crewe , and from that point of the journey the worst of the torment ceased . Their merciful fellow-men were mostly in bed , dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing . But the silence of night had its own torture . As the train rumbled on through the darkness , now rattling in a long tunnel , now sliding into open air like a boat into still water , Paul Ritson 's mind went back to the day which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to another existence , when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping .