a
quarter after eight o'clock
The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me , and so I became aware of my sister , -- lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head , dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire , -- destined never to be on the Rampage again , while she was the wife of Joe . With my head full of George Barnwell , I was at first disposed to believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister , or at all events that as her near relation , popularly known to be under obligations to her , I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than any one else . But when , in the clearer light of next morning , I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides , I took another view of the case , which was more reasonable . Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen , smoking his pipe , from a quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten . While he was there , my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door , and had exchanged Good Night with a farm-laborer going home . The man could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her -LRB- he got into dense confusion when he tried to be -RRB- , than that it must have been before nine . When Joe went home at five minutes before ten , he found her struck down on the floor , and promptly called in assistance .