three o’clock
`` You have broken your vow ! '' I cried . `` You have been writing at night . '' `` No , '' he said ; `` it was morning when I began -- three o'clock . And it pays better to get up and write than to lie awake thinking . '' Judging by the speed with which the novel grew in the next few weeks , I could tell that Derrick 's nights were of the worst . He began , too , to look very thin and haggard , and I more than once noticed that curious ` sleep-walking ' expression in his eyes ; he seemed to me just like a man who has received his death-blow , yet still lingers -- half alive , half dead .