ten o'clock at night
As he spoke , the sound of a corn-stalk fiddle , and of foresters ' naked feet dancing on the floor of the old Milburn cabin , came crooning out in the night . In another hour they were at the Furnace village , its blast gone out , its lines of huts deserted , no human soul to be seen ; and the mill-pond , lying like a parchment under the funereal cypress-trees , seemed stained with the blood of the bog-ores that oozed upward from the depths like the corpse of murdered Enterprise , suffocated in Meshach Milburn 's foreclosure . A sense of desolation filled them all ; but what was it , in either of the white twain , to the bursting ties of that lovely quadroon , raised like a lily in the household heat of kindness and the breath of purity , to be cast forth like a witch , on a moment 's information , and consigned to the ponds and night-damps ? The horses toiled through the sand till an open country of farms gave better roads , and at ten o'clock at night they crossed the Pocomoke at Snow Hill , and stopped at a gate before a neat , whitewashed , one-story house , with a large stack-chimney over the centre , and two doors and a single window in the front . It stood in a short street leading to the river , whose splutter-docks and reeds were seen near by among the masts of vessels and the mounds of sawdust . Virgie kissed Rhoda good-night , and descended with Mr. Tilghman , who opened a gate , and , going up some steps , knocked at a vine-environed door . A window opened and there was a parley , and the door soon afterwards unclosed softly and admitted them .