midnight
` I sat thinking of him after the French lieutenant had left , not , however , in connection with De Jongh 's cool and gloomy backshop , where we had hurriedly shaken hands not very long ago , but as I had seen him years before in the last flickers of the candle , alone with me in the long gallery of the Malabar House , with the chill and the darkness of the night at his back . The respectable sword of his country 's law was suspended over his head . To-morrow -- or was it to-day ? -LRB- midnight had slipped by long before we parted -RRB- -- the marble-faced police magistrate , after distributing fines and terms of imprisonment in the assault-and-battery case , would take up the awful weapon and smite his bowed neck . Our communion in the night was uncommonly like a last vigil with a condemned man . He was guilty too . He was guilty -- as I had told myself repeatedly , guilty and done for ; nevertheless , I wished to spare him the mere detail of a formal execution .