About eleven o'clock
There was a group of people in their best clothes on the porch , and considerable activity about the front yard , to the fence of which a goodly number of horses and mules were hitched . The little church , with its gray , weather-beaten spire , could also be seen farther away , on a slight elevation . It had a fence around it , and blended with the whiteness of the fence were a few gravestones . About eleven o'clock Westerfelt saw a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell . Then it began to toll . The boy was an unpractised hand , and the strokes were irregular , sometimes too slow and sometimes too rapid . It was a signal for the procession to leave the house .