about ten o'clock at night
Epictetus remarks that our chief happiness should consist in knowing that we are entirely indifferent to calamity ; that disgrace is nothing if our consciences are right and that death , far from being a calamity is , in fact , a release . But the world only boasts of a few great minds capable of believing these theories , and Larkin 's was not one of them . He was distinctly and completely depressed at the prospect ahead of him . It was about ten o'clock at night and he sat in the chair beside his table , upon which a candle was burning , running over the pages of an ancient magazine . The knowledge of what the cowmen had decided to do with him had been brought by a committee of three of the men just before the supper hour and since that time Larkin had been fuming and growling with rage . There seems to be something particularly shameful in a whipping that makes it the most dreaded of punishments . It was particularly so at the time in which this story is laid , for echoes of '65 were still to be heard reverberating from one end of the land to the other .