midnight
And alien Israel there -- at times staring dreamily about him -- seemed like some amazed runaway steer , or trespassing Pequod Indian , impounded on the shores of Narraganset Bay , long ago ; and back to New England our exile was called in his soul . For still working , and thinking of home ; and thinking of home , and working amid the verdant quietude of this little oasis , one rapt thought begat another , till at last his mind settled intensely , and yet half humorously , upon the image of Old Huckleberry , his mother 's favorite old pillion horse ; and , ere long , hearing a sudden scraping noise -LRB- some hob-shoe without , against the iron pailing -RRB- , he insanely took it to be Old Huckleberry in his stall , hailing him -LRB- Israel -RRB- with his shod fore-foot clattering against the planks -- his customary trick when hungry -- and so , down goes Israel 's hook , and with a tuft of white clover , impulsively snatched , he hurries away a few paces in obedience to the imaginary summons . But soon stopping midway , and forlornly gazing round at the enclosure , he bethought him that a far different oval , the great oval of the ocean , must be crossed ere his crazy errand could be done ; and even then , Old Huckleberry would be found long surfeited with clover , since , doubtless , being dead many a summer , he must be buried beneath it . And many years after , in a far different part of the town , and in far less winsome weather too , passing with his bundle of flags through Red-Cross street , towards Barbican , in a fog so dense that the dimmed and massed blocks of houses , exaggerated by the loom , seemed shadowy ranges on ranges of midnight hills , he heard a confused pastoral sort of sounds -- tramplings , lowings , halloos -- and was suddenly called to by a voice to head off certain cattle , bound to Smithfield , bewildered and unruly in the fog . Next instant he saw the white face -- white as an orange-blossom -- of a black-bodied steer , in advance of the drove , gleaming ghost-like through the vapors ; and presently , forgetting his limp , with rapid shout and gesture , he was more eager , even than the troubled farmers , their owners , in driving the riotous cattle back into Barbican . Monomaniac reminiscences were in him -- `` To the right , to the right ! '' he shouted , as , arrived at the street corner , the farmers beat the drove to the left , towards Smithfield : `` To the right !