eight
o'clock
And where neither grass nor ivy can subjugate , soft , velvety moss reigns humbly . In the year 1901 , which is the period of this story , the enrolment in all departments at Erskine was close to six hundred students . The freshman class , as had been the case for many years past , was the largest in the history of the college . It numbered 180 ; but of this number we are at present chiefly interested in only two ; and these two , at the moment when this chapter begins -- which , to be exact , is eight o'clock of the evening of the twenty-fourth day of September in the year above mentioned -- were busily at work in a first-floor study in the boarding-house of Mrs. Curtis on Elm Street . It were perhaps more truthful to say that one was busily at work and the other was busily advising and directing . Neil Fletcher stood on a small table , which swayed perilously from side to side at his every movement , and drove nails into an already much mutilated wall . Paul Gale sat in a hospitable armchair upholstered in a good imitation of green leather and nodded approval .