ten o'clock
For the first time in my life , and it has happened but twice since , I heard the whistles of the engines on the railroad twelve miles away to the north . There was a little beard of hoar frost along the side of every spear of grass and weed ; which , as the sun rose higher , dropped off and lay under every twig and bent , in a little heap if it stood up straight , or in a windrow if it slanted ; for so still was the air that the frost went straight down , and lay as it fell . I could hear the bawling of the cattle in every barnyard for miles around , and the crowing of roosters as the fowls strutted about in the warm sun . It was thawing by ten o'clock . The temperature had run up as the wind dropped ; and as I now know , with the lowering of the pressure of the barometer , if we had had one . `` This is a weather-breeder ! '' This was my way of telling to myself what a scientist would have described as marked low barometer ; and he would have predicted from his maps that we should soon find ourselves in the northwest quadrant of the `` low '' with high winds and falling temperature .