midnight
There were vague traditions in the office of presents of bizarre and quite impossible clothes made to office boys and stenographers ; of ex-convicts reoutfitted and sent rejoicing to foreign parts ; of tramps gorged to repletion and then pumped dry of their adventures in Mr. Tutt 's comfortable , dingy old library ; of a fur coat suddenly clapped upon the rounded shoulders of old Scraggs , the antiquated scrivener in the accountant 's cage in the outer office , whose alcoholic career , his employer alleged , was marked by a trail of empty rum kegs , each one flying the white flag of surrender . And yet old Ephraim Tutt could on occasion be cold as chiseled steel , and as hard . Any appeal from a child , a woman or an outcast always met with his ready response ; but for the rich , successful and those in power he seemed to entertain a deep and enduring grudge . He would burn the midnight oil with equal zest to block a crooked deal on the part of a wealthy corporation or to devise a means to extricate some no less crooked rascal from the clutches of the law , provided that the rascal seemed the victim of hard luck , inheritance or environment . His weather-beaten conscience was as elastic as his heart . Indeed when under the expansive influence of a sufficient quantity of malt extract or ancient brandy from the cellaret on his library desk he had sometimes been heard to enunciate the theory that there was very little difference between the people in jail and those who were not . He would work weeks without compensation to argue the case of some guilty rogue before the Court of Appeals , in order , as he said , to `` settle the law , '' when his only real object was to get the miserable fellow out of jail and send him back to his wife and children .