five o'clock
God have mercy upon us ! '' PART V. Alexandra Ivar was sitting at a cobbler 's bench in the barn , mending harness by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm . It was only five o'clock of a mid-October day , but a storm had come up in the afternoon , bringing black clouds , a cold wind and torrents of rain . The old man wore his buffalo-skin coat , and occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the lantern . Suddenly a woman burst into the shed , as if she had been blown in , accompanied by a shower of rain-drops . It was Signa , wrapped in a man 's overcoat and wearing a pair of boots over her shoes .