noon
Really , there is no accounting for it at all unless we figure that somewhere far back in Judge Priest 's ancestry there were Celtic gallants , versed in the small sweet tricks of gallantry . He bent his head and he kissed her hand with a grace for which a Tom Moore or a Raleigh might have envied him . Let us now for a briefened space cast up in a preliminary way the tally on behalf of the whimsical devils of circumstance and the part they are to play in the culminating and concluding periods of this narrative . On the noon train of the day following the night when that occurred which has been set forth in the foregoing pages , Judge Priest , in the company of Doctor Lake and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby , late of King 's Hell Hounds , C.S.A. , departs for Reelfoot Lake upon his annual fishing trip . In the afternoon Jeff Poindexter , the judge 's body servant , going through his master 's wardrobe seeking articles suitable for his own adornment in the master 's absence , is pained to discern stripings of spilled ink down the legs of a pair of otherwise unmarred white trousers , and , having no intention that garments which will one day come into his permanent possession shall be thus disfigured and sullied , promptly bundles them up and bears them to the cleansing , pressing and repairing establishment of one Hyman Pedaloski . The coat which matches the trousers goes along too . Upon the underside of one of its sleeves there is a big ink blob .