nine o’clock
`` That 's it ! Gad ' rabotin -- the wheel of fire 'll turn him back to a hag again ! '' The little gentleman protested , but they seized him and dragged him from the steps . Tossed like a ball , so light was he , he grasped the gold-headed cane as one might cling to life , and declared that he was no witch , but a poor French exile , arrested the night before for being abroad after nine o'clock , against the orders of the Royal Court . Many of the crowd knew him well enough by sight , but they were too delirious to act with intelligence now . The dark cloud was lifting a little from the sun , and dread of the Judgment Day was declining ; but as the pendulum swung back towards normal life again , it carried with it the one virulent and common prejudice of the country -- radical hatred of the French -- which often slumbered but never died . The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay , who lived in hourly enmity with the oyster-fishers of Carteret , gashed his cheek with the shell of an ormer .