night, about one o'clock
in the morning
He would remain the Ramuntcho of other times , the `` son of Franchita , '' player of pelota and smuggler , free , freed from everything , owing nothing to and asking nothing from anybody . And he felt serene , without remorse , without fright , either , in this mortuary house , from which the shades had just disappeared , peaceful now and friendly -- At the frontier , in a mountain hamlet . A black night , about one o'clock in the morning ; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain . At the front of a sinister house which casts no light outside , Ramuntcho loads his shoulders with a heavy smuggled box , under the rippling rain , in the midst of a tomb-like obscurity . Itchoua 's voice commands secretly , -- as if one hardly touched with a bow the last strings of a bass viol , -- and around him , in the absolute darkness , one divines the presence of other smugglers similarly loaded , ready to start on an adventure . It is now more than ever Ramuntcho 's life , to run almost every night , especially on the cloudless and moonless nights when one sees nothing , when the Pyrenees are an immense chaos of shade .