two o'clock in the
morning
He looked at the towns and wanted light and color to play over them as they played over the stones , and when that did not happen , his mind , filled with strange new hungers engendered by the disease of thinking , made up words over which lights played . `` The gods have scattered towns over the flat lands , '' his mind had said , as he sat in the smoking car of the train , and the phrase came back to him later , as he sat in the darkness on the log with his head held in his hands . It was a good phrase and lights could play over it as they played over the colored stones , but it would in no way answer the problem of how to `` get around '' the Iowa 's man patent on the hay loading device . Hugh did not get to the Butterworth farmhouse until two o'clock in the morning , but when he got there his wife was awake and waiting for him . She heard his heavy , dragging footsteps in the road as he turned in at the farm gate , and getting quickly out of bed , threw a cloak over her shoulders and came out to the porch facing the barns . A late moon had come up and the barnyard was washed with moonlight . From the barns came the low , sweet sound of contented animals nibbling at the hay in the mangers before them , from a row of sheds back of one of the barns came the soft bleating of sheep and in a far away field a calf bellowed loudly and was answered by its mother .