midnight
Altogether it was very painful and disturbing , and he was taking a rather gloomy view of the assistant master 's lot as he sat down to finish off the rest of his examination papers . It was not all roses , the life of an assistant master at a public school . He had continually to be sinking his own individual sympathies in the claims of his duty . Mr. Appleby was the last man who would willingly have reported a boy for enjoying a midnight ramble . But he was the last man to shirk the duty of reporting him , merely because it was one decidedly not to his taste . Mr. Wain sat on for some minutes after his companion had left , pondering over the news he had heard . Even now he clung to the idea that Appleby had made some extraordinary mistake .