midnight
His confident tone reassured them ; more still his making known the design he had already conceived , and his ability to execute it . He was acquainted with the old convent and the paths leading to it -- every inch of them . It needed not their united appeal to urge him to immediate departure . He was off the instant after , and long before the clock of Talpam had struck the midnight hour , well up the mountain road , with eyes looking to the right , in the direction of the Cerro Ajusco . The surmise which had influenced Zorillo to leaving the convent cell earlier than he intended was a correct one . The goings on in the Refectory were , at the time , of an unusual kind -- a grand occasion , as he had worded it . There were some fifty men in it ; but not one of them now effecting either the garb or the behaviour of the monk .