two
o'clock in the morning
The Almighty had not only stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him -- He had driven this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them , and yet the wretched road was going toward them like a snail . On the fifth night , thereafter he was back there at the tunnel again from New York -- with a grim mouth and a happy eye . He had brought success with him this time and there was no sleep for him that night . He had been delayed by a wreck , it was two o'clock in the morning , and not a horse was available ; so he started those twenty miles afoot , and day was breaking when he looked down on the little valley shrouded in mist and just wakening from sleep . Things had been moving while he was away , as he quickly learned . The English were buying lands right and left at the gap sixty miles southwest . Two companies had purchased most of the town-site where he was -- HIS town-site -- and were going to pool their holdings and form an improvement company .