four o'clock in the morning
Perchance it may bring to him a message from the far-away home where the birds sang for him , and the waves and the flowers spoke to him , and `` Unclean '' had not been written against his name . Of all on the Pest Island he alone is hopeless . He is a leper , and his sentence is that of a living death in a strange land . A woman with face all seared and blotched by something that had burned through the skin sat propped up in the doorway of a Bowery restaurant at four o'clock in the morning , senseless , apparently dying . A policeman stood by , looking anxiously up the street and consulting his watch . At intervals he shook her to make sure she was not dead . The drift of the Bowery that was borne that way eddied about , intent upon what was going on .