nine o'clock
His mind had been bathed in sleep and temperance , the two great physicians , and wiped dry , like the feet of the Prince of sufferers , with women 's hairs . Exercise , natural to a Virginian , awakened his flowing spirits again , and he fancied the air grew purer as he advanced into the north , though there was hardly any perceptible change of elevation . The country grew drier , however , as he turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp -- the counterbalance of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia -- receded from the Chesapeake waters , and approached the tributaries of the Atlantic . At nine o'clock he entered the court-house cluster of Georgetown , a little place of a few hundred people , pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generation before , or about ten years after the independence of the country . It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses , assembled around a sandy square , in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees ; and a double-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side , surrounded by little cabins for the county officers , pitched here and there , and in the rear was a jail of two stories , with family apartments below , and the dungeon window , the debtors ' room , and a family bedroom above ; and near the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post , like a dismantled pump , with a pillory floor some feet above the ground . Young maples , mulberry and tulip trees , and ailanthuses grew bravely to make shade along the two streets which pierced the square , and the four streets which were parallel to its sides -- pretty lanes being inserted between , to which the loamy gardens ran ; and , as the Judge stopped at the tavern near the court , he was told it was `` returning day , '' and the place would soon be filled with constituents assembling to hear how `` she 'd gone '' -- _ she _ , as the Judge knew well , meaning Sussex County , and `` gone '' intimating her decision expressed at the polls . `` She 's gone for Adams an ' Clayton , ai n't she , Jonathan Torbert ? ''