midnight
Spending his evenings in the midst of merry faces , and ready tongues fluent with the tones of jollity , if not always of wit , which glided sometimes into no too earnest discussion of the difficult subjects occupying their student hours ; surrounded by the vapours of whisky-toddy , and the smoke of cutty pipes , till far into the short hours ; then hurrying home , and lapsing into unrefreshing slumbers over intended study ; or sitting up all night to prepare the tasks which had been neglected for a ball or an evening with Wilson , the great interpreter of Scottish song -- it is hardly to be wondered at that he should lose the finer consciousness of higher powers and deeper feelings , not from any behaviour in itself wrong , but from the hurry , noise , and tumult in the streets of life , that , penetrating too deep into the house of life , dazed and stupefied the silent and lonely watcher in the chamber of conscience , far apart . He had no time to think or feel . The session drew to a close . He eschewed all idleness ; shut himself up , after class hours , with his books ; ate little , studied hard , slept irregularly , working always best between midnight and two in the morning ; carried the first honours in most of his classes ; and at length breathed freely , but with a dizzy brain , and a face that revealed , in pale cheeks , and red , weary eyes , the results of an excess of mental labour -- an excess which is as injurious as any other kind of intemperance , the moral degradation alone kept out of view . Proud of his success , he sat down and wrote a short note , with a simple statement of it , to David ; hoping , in his secret mind , that he would attribute his previous silence to an absorption in study which had not existed before the end of the session was quite at hand . Now that he had more time for reflection , he could not bear the idea that that noble rustic face should look disapprovingly or , still worse , coldly upon him ; and he could not help feeling as if the old ploughman had taken the place of his father , as the only man of whom he must stand in awe , and who had a right to reprove him . He did reprove him now , though unintentionally .