midnight
It still was there when they said to him suddenly that the wind had changed , and that the flame and sparks were now blowing toward the saw-mill . Even when he gave orders , and set to work to defend the saw-mill , arranging a line of men with buckets on its roof , and so saving it , this look remained . It was something spiritual and unmaterial , something , maybe , which had to do with the philosophy he had preached , thought and practised over long years . It did not disappear when at last , after midnight , everyone had gone , and the smouldering ruins of his greatest asset lay mournful in the wan light of the moon . Kind and good friends like the Clerk of the Court and the New Cure had seen him to his bedroom at midnight , leaving him there with a promise that they would come on the morrow ; and he had said goodnight evenly , and had shut the door upon them with a sort of smile . But long after they had gone , when Sebastian Dolores and Seraphe Corniche were asleep , he had got up again and left the house , to gaze at the spot where the big white mill with the red roof had been-the mill which had been there in the days of the Baron of Beaugard , and to which time had only added size and adornment . The gold-cock weathervane of the mill , so long the admiration of people living and dead , and indeed the symbol of himself , as he had been told , being so full of life and pride , courage and vigour-it lay among the ruins , a blackened relic of the Barbilles .