four o'clock
Seeing this , he devised a private scheme of annoyance . This conversation set Dewey to thinking . Though he was independent , he was not foolishly so , and he was not willing , out of a spirit of opposition , to expose his new acquaintance to annoyance , perhaps to injury . He did not care to retain Ki Sing in his employment for any length of time , and made up his mind to dismiss him early the next mornng , say , at four o'clock , before the miners had thrown off the chains of sleep . He did not anticipate any harm to his Mongolian friend during the night ; but this was because he did not fully understand the feeling of outraged dignity which rankled in the soul of O'Reilly . Patrick O'Reilly was like his countrymen in being always ready for a fight ; but he was unlike them in harboring a sullen love of revenge . In this respect he was more like an Indian .