two o'clock in the morning
Across the marsh the old tramped road held up the horses , and the plow swept clear a little wider swath . `` She 'll freeze a little to-night , '' said Radway hopefully . `` You sprinkler boys get at her and wet her down . '' Until two o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men creaked back and forth spilling hardly-gathered water -- weird , unearthly , in the flickering light of their torches . Then they crept in and ate sleepily the food that a sleepy cookee set out for them . By morning the mere surface of this sprinkled water had frozen , the remainder beneath had drained away , and so Radway found in his road considerable patches of shell ice , useless , crumbling . He looked in despair at the sky .