midnight
It has its drawbacks . Bill is going to cash in all right , and I think it 's for the best ; but , Al , we 've got to take care of the old man , and see that he does n't go up in the air . '' A Sitting or Two in the Game with the World and Destiny . Our game at Lattimore was one of those absorbing ones in which the sunlight of next morning sifts through the blinds before the players are aware that midnight is past . Day by day , deal by deal , it went on , card followed card in fateful fall upon the table , and we who sat in , and played the World and Destiny with so pitifully small a pile of chips at the outset , saw the World and Destiny losing to us , until our hands could scarcely hold , our eyes hardly estimate , the high-piled stacks of counters which were ours . We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn ; we heard the long-drawn , wavering , mounting , falling , persistent howl of the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks ; we saw the loads of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs , -- as men at the board of the green cloth hear the striking of the hours . And we heeded them as little .