midnight
The fifty dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton . The doctor would put Jimmy Finn 's skeleton in Nicodemus 's bed ! This was done -- about half past ten in the evening . About Nicodemus 's usual bedtime -- midnight -- the village jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den . They reached the window and peeped in . There sat the long-legged pauper , on his bed , in a very short shirt , and nothing more ; he was dangling his legs contentedly back and forth , and wheezing the music of `` Camptown Races '' out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his mouth ; by him lay a new jewsharp , a new top , and solid india-rubber ball , a handful of painted marbles , five pounds of `` store '' candy , and a well-gnawed slab of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music . He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three dollars and was enjoying the result !