ten o'clock
And so saying , she handed me the book and pointed to the place . This was the very refinement of torture , and I draw a veil over the sad spectacle which followed . Nor was I the only victim standing there struggling and perspiring through the long sentences , turned back whenever I made a mistake , to begin the page over again , till the end of the chapter seemed to get farther and farther away ; the other boys , too , came in for part of the tragedy , for the Henniker , being now free of her book , had no occupation for her eyes but to glare at them , and no occupation for her tongue but to level bad marks and rebukes and punishments at the head of every offender . `` Reading '' lasted that evening until ten o'clock , and to this day I can not imagine how it ever came to an end even then . I know I never got to the end . This sad experience gave a considerable additional zest to our hopes of freedom on the following day . Smith was not the sort of fellow to undertake what he did not mean to carry through , and I was astonished to see how carefully his plans were laid , and how precisely he had allotted to every one of us our respective duties .