nine o'clock
He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and wandered about . The Portier had brought coal to the landing ; Peter carried it in . He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy 's stand and wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine . Then , finding it still only nine o'clock , he turned up the lamp in the salon and wrote an exciting letter from Jimmy 's father , in which a lost lamb , wandering on the mountain-side , had been picked up by an avalanche and carried down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd . And because he stood so in loco parentis , and because it seemed so inevitable that before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd , and , of course , because it had been a trying day all through , Peter 's lips were none too steady as he folded up the letter . The fire was dead in the stove ; Peter put out the salon lamp and closed the shutters . In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his way through the room .