midnight
FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well in toward the Kentucky shore , to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton . A few yards below its mouth , in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore , lay the wharf-boat , little more than a landing stage . The hotel was but a hundred feet away , at the top of the steep levee . It was midnight , so everyone in the village had long been asleep . After several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in drawing to the door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge , knotted hand -- a man of great stature , amazingly lean and long of leg , with a monstrous head thatched and fronted with coarse , yellow-brown hair . He had on a dirty cotton shirt and dirty cotton trousers -- a night dress that served equally well for the day . His feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns and bunions .