About nine o'clock at night
`` For the time being , '' drawled Noah , `` you can lie down out there in the open beside the canal and take a nap . Shootin ' craps has been sort of hard on your nerves . I 'll look after the water for a spell . '' About nine o'clock at night Imogene Chandler came in from the cotton field . Out there in the dim starlight stretched the long rows of cotton , erect , green , luxuriant . The water had come in time . It had flowed into their ditches at four o'clock the morning after Noah Ezekiel passed .