eight o'clock
Ten minutes afterwards I was preparing for bed , when he cried up the stair -- `` Come awa ' doon . '' I joined the family party in the room : Hendry was sitting close to Jess . `` Let us read , '' he said , firmly , `` in the fourteenth of John . '' After the eight o'clock bell had rung , Hendry occasionally crossed over to the farm of T'nowhead and sat on the pig-sty . If no one joined him he scratched the pig , and returned home gradually . Here what was almost a club held informal meetings , at which two or four , or even half a dozen assembled to debate , when there was any one to start them . The meetings were only memorable when Tammas Haggart was in fettle , to pronounce judgments in his well-known sarcastic way .