midnight
The Four Corners in Middleton made a pleasant drive from the university town of Camberton . Many a time in the history of the house a party of young fellows had driven over the old turnpike that started where the arsenal used to stand in the sacred quarter of Camberton , and as the evening sun gilded the low , fresh-water marshes beyond Spring Pond , would trot on toward the rolling hills of Middleton . After dinner , or a dance , or , perhaps , mere chat over a late supper , they rode away at midnight singing as they whipped up their sleepy nags and otherwise disturbing the decorum of night in Middleton . Or , maybe , routed out early on a frosty October morning , after lighting pipes and a word with the stable-boy , they would snuggle into overcoats and spin away over the hard roads where the night frost still lay on the caked dust in the hollows like a crust of milk . In crossing the meadows the autumn sun swung into their faces , a comfortable solace on a morning drive , exciting them forward toward Camberton that they might report in the little stucco chapel while the tinny college bell was still harshly calling to prayer . The Ellwells had kept the old Four Corners in Middleton long after the family had moved out into the wider world of Boston , and from farming and the ministry had entered the spheres of commerce and money-owning .