twenty-seven
minutes past five
I doubt if I need even have reflected . I was struck , from the beginning , by the fact that the whole circumstance was governed by one primary question : the question of time . When Charles d'Ernemont was still in possession of his wits , he wrote a date upon the three pictures . Later , in the gloom in which he was struggling , a faint glimmer of intelligence led him every year to the centre of the old garden ; and the same faint glimmer led him away from it every year at the same moment , that is to say , at twenty-seven minutes past five . Something must have acted on the disordered machinery of his brain in this way . What was the superior force that controlled the poor madman 's movements ? Obviously , the instinctive notion of time represented by the sun-dial in the farmer-general 's pictures .