This has also been used in several works of literature as a cliché for what is also called 'the wee small hours', or 'the early morning', often with connotations of blackness (both of night and of the spirits) and depression (e. g. Longfellow wrote in The Cross of Snow (1879) "In the long, sleepless watches of the night").
It is one of the "Tales" which deals with the tense, enclosed society of the British in India, and the levels of gossip and malice that could be engendered therein.
Later that night, as Platte returns home, his horse rears and upsets his cart, throwing him to the ground outside Mrs Larkyn's house, where his watch falls loose.
Going home in a hired carriage, the Colonel finds the driver drunk, and returns late.
In the morning, Mrs Larkyn, who has been a victim of the Colonel's wife scandal-mongering, finds the watch that Platte has dropped, and shows it to him.