four o'clock
God bless you again my dear boy -- and -- and make you one of us some day ! '' Anthony smiled at him a little tremulously , for the gratitude and the blessing of this man was dear to him ; and after another hand grasp , he turned away to the right , leaving the priest still half under the shadow of the door looking after him . He had done his errand promptly and discreetly . Newman 's Court lay dark and silent under the stars on Sunday morning a little after four o'clock . The gloomy weather of the last three or four days had passed off in heavy battalions of sullen sunset clouds on the preceding evening , and the air was full of frost . By midnight thin ice was lying everywhere ; pendants of it were beginning to form on the overhanging eaves ; and streaks of it between the cobble-stones that paved the court . The great city lay in a frosty stillness as of death .