half past four o'clock
The fast mare had to trot very gently , and the old master would stop and adjust the pillows from time to time , and administer the restoratives which the physician had got ready , all as naturally and easily as if he had been bred a nurse , vastly to his own surprise , and with not a little gain to his self-appreciation . He was a serviceable kind of body on occasion , after all , was he not , hey , Mr. Byles Gridley ? he said to himself . At half past four o'clock on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars , and roused the slumbering household to receive back the wanderer . It was the Irishwoman , Kitty Fagan , huddled together in such amorphous guise , that she looked as if she had been fitted in a tempest of petticoats and a whirlwind of old shawls , who presented herself at the door . But there was a very warm heart somewhere in that queer-looking bundle of clothes , and it was not one of those that can throb or break in silence . When she saw the long covered wagon , and the grave face of the old master , she thought it was all over with the poor girl she loved , and that this was the undertaker 's wagon bringing back only what had once been Myrtle Hazard .