four o'clock
Moreover , Glover knew how Bucks had chafed under the conditions that kept the directors on his hands . They were impatient to get to the coast , and the general manager was anxious to be rid of them as soon as there should be some certainty of getting them safely over the mountains . Glover , on the back of the telegram , scrawled a note to Crosby , the master-mechanic , and turned over not to sleep , but to think -- and to think , not of the work before him , but of her and of her situation . A roundhouse caller roused him at half-past three with word that the snow battery was marked up for four o'clock . He rose , dressed deliberately and carefully for the exposure ahead , and sat down before a candle to tell Gertrude , in a note , when he hoped to be back . Locking his trunk when he had done , he snuffed out the candle and closed his room door behind him . The hall was dark , but he knew its turns , and the carpeted stairs gave no sound as he walked down .