midnight
At midnight the young cavalry surgeon , who had been freely dosed with brandy , professed himself ready to take over the minor casualties . The two hospital surgeons , by this time worn out , accepted the offer and withdrew . No one thought of me . I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders on the edge of an unoccupied bed -LRB- from which a dead man had been carried out a little before midnight -RRB- I must have dropped across it in a sleep of utter exhaustion . It appears too that the young doctor , finding me there a short while after , carried me out and laid me on the ground with my head against the hut . He never admitted this : for I had been attending upon him , off and on , since his arrival , and that he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accounted for . But I can not believe -LRB- as certainly I do not remember -RRB- that of my own motion I crawled outside the hut and stretched myself on the frozen ground , or that , exhausted as I was , I could have walked ten yards in my sleep .