nine o'clock
`` Luella she kept gettin ' paler and paler , and she never took her eyes off my face . There was somethin' awful about the way she looked at me and never spoke one word . After awhile I quit talkin ' and I went home . I watched that night , but her lamp went out before nine o'clock , and when Doctor Malcom came drivin ' past and sort of slowed up he see there wa 'n' t any light and he drove along . I saw her sort of shy out of meetin ' the next Sunday , too , so he should n't go home with her , and I begun to think mebbe she did have some conscience after all . It was only a week after that that Maria Brown died -- sort of sudden at the last , though everybody had seen it was comin ' . Well , then there was a good deal of feelin ' and pretty dark whispers .