seven
o'clock
Even when some few of the satellites broke away from him and scattered into other parts of the town , at the livery stable , the drug store , the Grange , talking a little dubiously , the impression was definite that they were only meteoric scraps , cast-off clinkers that could not stand the fire and the fizz and the whirl in Madeira 's orbit . The superintendent of the Tigmore County schools , a long , lean man with a trick of covert sarcasm , happened to be in Canaan that day , and he cracked a joke about Madeira 's `` galley-gang , '' as the bevy of men swept past him on their way back to the bank . In Canaan almost any joke had a fair chance to become classic through immediate and long-drawn repetition , and the superintendent 's joke was soon going up and down the street as majestically as though swathed in a Roman toga . By seven o'clock the joke had come on to Madeira 's ears . At eight o'clock the superintendent was one of seven men who sat in conference with Madeira in the private office of the bank . That was Madeira 's way . Besides Salver , the Joplin man , and the superintendent , there were at the conference Larriman , a man who counted his acres by the thousands in We-all Prairie ; Heinkel , the German sheep-raiser from the southern part of the county ; Shelby , from the cotton lands of the Upper Bottom ; Pegram , the Canaan postmaster , and Quin Beasley , from the Grange store .