eight o'clock
Strangest of all to think , in a case like this , of the people who were left behind , or in some way or other prevented from going , and always afterwards told of how they had escaped being on board the Mariposa Belle that day ! Some of the instances were certainly extraordinary . Nivens , the lawyer , escaped from being there merely by the fact that he was away in the city . Towers , the tailor , only escaped owing to the fact that , not intending to go on the excursion he had stayed in bed till eight o'clock and so had not gone . He narrated afterwards that waking up that morning at half-past five , he had thought of the excursion and for some unaccountable reason had felt glad that he was not going . The case of Yodel , the auctioneer , was even more inscrutable . He had been to the Oddfellows ' excursion on the train the week before and to the Conservative picnic the week before that , and had decided not to go on this trip .