ten o'clock
It was nearly two weeks after the incident , that Creed came to Moncrossen with his own story of what happened that night at Melton 's No. 8 , and the boss knew that he lied . As they talked in the little office the greener , accompanied by Fallon , passed close to the window . At the sight of the man the spotter 's face became pasty , and he shrank trembling and wide-eyed , as from the sight of a ghost , and Moncrossen knew that his abject terror was not engendered by physical fear . He flew into a rage , cursing and bullying the craven , but failed utterly to dispel the unwholesome fear or to shake the other 's repeated statement that at a few minutes past ten o'clock that night he had seen the greener lying hopelessly drunk upon the floor of the shack with the flames roaring about him , and at six o'clock the next evening had seen him hobble into Burrage 's store , forty miles to the southward , fresh and apparently unharmed save for his injured foot . Moncrossen 's hatred of the greener rested primarily upon the fear that one day he would expose him to Appleton ; added to this was a mighty jealousy of his rapid rise to proficiency and the rankling memory of the scene of their first meeting in the grub-shack . But his fear of him was a physical fear -- a fear born of the certain knowledge that , measured by his own standards , the greener was the better man . And now came the perplexing question as to how the man had reached Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight hours after the burning of the shack .