about five o'clock
Haeberlein , though growing perceptibly weaker , still lingered , able now and then to enter into conversation , but for the most part just lying in patient silence , listening with a curious impartiality to whatever they chose to read to him , or whatever they began to talk about . He had all his life been a man of no particular creed , and he retained his curious indifference to the end , though Erica found that he had a sort of vague belief in a First Cause , and a shadowy expectation of a personal existence after death . She found this out through Brian , who had a way of getting at the minds of his patients . One very hot afternoon she had been with him for several hours when about five o'clock her father came into the room . Another prosecution under the blasphemy Laws had just commenced . He had spent the whole day in a stifling law court , and even to the dying man his exhaustion was apparent . `` Things gone badly ? ''