ten o'clock
His buckler was the right of free speech ; his sword , the argument that he stood for peace through all the world , for arbitration and disarmament among all the peoples of the world . * * * * * It was on the evening of a day in January of this present year that young Drayton , Washington correspondent for the New York Epoch , sat in the office of his bureau on the second floor of the Hibbett Building , revising his account of a scene he had witnessed that afternoon from the press gallery of the House . He had instructions from his managing editor to cover the story at length . At ten o'clock he had finished what would make two columns in type and was polishing off his opening paragraphs before putting the manuscript on the wire when the door of his room opened and a man came in -- a shabby , tremulous figure . The comer was Quinlan . Quinlan was forty years old and looked fifty . Before whisky got him Quinlan had been a great newspaper man .