your wood until ten o'clock, until the stroke of ten,--until it has done
striking, I mean; if no one ask, then the wood belongs to Professor
Gellert: but if a buyer come, then it is a sign that you need
not--should not give it away. There, that's all settled. But how? what
means this? Can you make your good deed dependent on such a chance as
this? No, no; I don't mean it. But yet--yet--only for a joke, I'll try
it."

Temptation kept him turning as it were in a circle, and still he stood
with an apparently quiet heart by his wagon in the market. The people
who heard him muttering in this way to himself looked at him with
wonder, and passed by him to another wagon, as though he had not been
there. It struck nine. Can you wait patiently another hour? Christopher
lighted his pipe, and looked calmly on, while this and that load was
driven off. It struck the quarter, half-hour, three-quarters.
Christopher now put his pipe in his pocket; it had long been cold, and
his hands were almost frozen; all his blood had rushed to his heart. Now
it struck the full hour, stroke after stroke. At first he counted; then
he fancied he had lost a stroke and miscalculated. Either voluntarily
or involuntarily, he said to himself, when it had finished striking,
"You're wrong; it is nine, not ten." He turned round that he might not
see the dial, and thus he stood for some time, with his hands upon the
wagon-rack, gazing at the wood. He knew not how long he had been thus
standing, when some one tapped him on the shoulder, and said, "How much
for the load of wood?"

Christopher turned round: there was an odd look of irresolution in his
eyes as he said: "Eh? eh? what time is it?"

"Half-past ten."