about three
o’clock
He compiled a set of rules on the subject , and indeed developed a whole philosophy of it , by which he struck off , as soluble , questions or classes of them . Some he thought out himself ; others were now and then answered in some learned book , that led the way through the very heart of one or another of his biggest mill-stones . So it was really none too much time that he had ; and , in truth , he did not actually decide upon his three questions , until just a week before the fearful day when he was to put them . It came at last , as every day of reckoning surely comes ; and Dr. Hicok , memorandum in hand , sat in his comfortable library about three o'clock on one beautiful warm summer afternoon , as pale as a sheet , his heart thumping away like Mr. Krupp 's biggest steam-hammer at Essen , his mouth and tongue parched and feverish , a pitcher of cold water at hand from which he sipped and sipped , though it seemed as if his throat repelled it into `` the globular state , '' or dispersed it into steam , as red-hot iron does . Around him were the records of the vast army of doubters and quibblers in whose works he had been hunting , as a traveller labours through a jungle , for the deepest doubts , the most remote inquiries . Sometimes , with that sort of hardihood , rather than reason , which makes a desperate man try to believe by his will what he longs to know to be true , Dr. Hicok would say to himself , `` I know I 've got him ! '' And then his heart would seem to fall out of him , it sank so suddenly , and with so deadly a faintness , as the other side of his awful case loomed before him , and he thought , `` But if -- ? ''