[Dark Saint Alaick]

Glancing upward at the clock on the mantelpiece (for I felt too drowsy to take out my
watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five minutes to spare. It was halfpast five; I could easily walk to the insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had never been known to exceed five-and-twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore, and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.
Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the timepiece, and was
half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd accidents when I found that, instead of
my ordinary fifteen or twenty minutes, I had been dozing only three; for it still wanted
seven-and-twenty of the appointed hour. I betook myself again to my nap, and at length a
second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement, it still wanted twenty-seven minutes
of six. I jumped up to examine the clock, and found that it had ceased running. My watch
informed me that it was half-past seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I was too
late for my appointment. "It will make no difference," I said: "I can call at the office in
the morning and apologize; in the meantime what can be the matter with the clock?"
Upon examining it I discovered that one of the raisin stems which I had been filiping
about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd had flown through the
fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the keyhole, with an end projecting
outward, had thus arrested the revolution of the minute hand.