nine o'clock
I did n't know a deacon could talk so sassy at a cow , and come so near swearing without actually saying cuss words . Well , I lugged swill until I was homesick to my stomach , and then I had to clean off horses , and go to the neighbors about a mile away to borrow a lot of rakes to use the next day . I was so tired I almost cried , and then I had to draw two barrels of water with a well bucket , to cleanse for washing the next day , and by that time I wanted to die . It was most nine o'clock , and I began to think about supper , when the deacon said all they had was bread and milk for supper Sunday night , and I rasseled with a tin basin of skim milk , and some old back number bread , and wanted to go to bed , but the deacon wanted to know if I was heathen enough to want to go to bed without evening prayers . There was no one thing I was less mashed on than evening prayers about that minute , but I had to take a prayer half an hour long on the top of that skim milk , and I guess it curdled the milk , for I had n't been in bed more than half an hour before I had the worst colic a boy ever had , and I thought I should die all alone up in that garret , on the floor , with nothing to make my last hours pleasant but some rats playing with ears of seed corn on the floor , and mice running through some dry pea pods . But how different the deacon talked in the evening devotions from what he did when the cow was galloping on him in the barnyard . Well , I got through the colic and was just getting to sleep when the deacon yelled for me to get up and hustle down stairs .