midnight
The necessity for food did not take him to the shack -- his arrows brought down game which he cooked . At any time , with a sharp stick , he could root up his fill of wild turnips . He knew where ripe berries loaded the bushes , and where the plums reddened in the thickets . And how could he chance staying out of the stockade after midnight , when any dawn might find his brothers free ? Thoughts of Brown Mink alone took his mind from his dream . He yearned to see her again , to mark how far disease had ravaged , to show her that though all others were indifferent , he was not . And he had determined to tell her farewell -- to tell her that he would win back his lost rank .