about nine o'clock
at night
`` Sooner would I die than yield to such vile service , '' said he . He did not know how soon his protestations would be put to the test . One night -- it was a week or two after Myles had come to Devlen -- Blunt was called to attend the Earl at livery . The livery was the last meal of the day , and was served with great pomp and ceremony about nine o'clock at night to the head of the house as he lay in bed . Curfew had not yet rung , and the lads in the squires ' quarters were still wrestling and sparring and romping boisterously in and out around the long row of rude cots in the great dormitory as they made ready for the night . Six or eight flaring links in wrought-iron brackets that stood out from the wall threw a great ruddy glare through the barrack-like room -- a light of all others to romp by . Myles and Gascoyne were engaged in defending the passage-way between their two cots against the attack of three other lads , and Myles held his sheepskin coverlet rolled up into a ball and balanced in his hand , ready for launching at the head of one of the others so soon as it should rise from behind the shelter of a cot .