ten o'clock
In telling Miss Marty that the town was deserted , Cai Tamblyn had forgotten the Vicar . That good man , it is perhaps superfluous to say , had not sought his bed . He was a widower , and had no one to dissuade him from keeping vigil until daybreak . At ten o'clock , therefore , having seen to the trimming of his lamp and dismissed the servants to rest , he lit his study fire , set the kettle upon it , and having mixed himself a bowl of brandy-punch -LRB- in the concoction of which all Troy acknowledged him to be an expert -RRB- , drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze , and sat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth time the annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively , redundantly , irrefutably , beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt , that with the morrow the world 's great age must be renewed and the Millennium dawn upon earth . For an hour and a half , or maybe three-quarters , he sat reading and reassuring himself that the armour of his proof was indeed proof-armour and exposed no chink to assault ; and then -- The Vicar was a man of clean conscience and regular habits . He closed his eyes to review the argument . By and by his chin dropped forward on his chest .