midnight
`` Everything all right ? '' Jim asked . `` I guess so , '' the other replied . `` But I hai n't seen your boiler sence before midnight . Eph was disturbin ' Mary Mite , and so I hung ` round her cabin pretty much the last half of the night . '' Jim went to his post at the boiler , and at an unaccustomed pace , from the point where he first saw and heard steam hissing upward from the safety valve . On quitting the night previous , he had banked the fire as usual , and this morning he should have found it burning so slowly that an hour of raking , replenishing , and open draughts would no more than start the machinery at seven o'clock .