seven o'clock
It was one Thursday evening in the latter part of November , about a week after Blueskin 's appearance off the capes , and while the one subject of talk was of the pirates being in Indian River inlet . The air was still and wintry ; a sudden cold snap had set in and skims of ice had formed over puddles in the road ; the smoke from the chimneys rose straight in the quiet air and voices sounded loud , as they do in frosty weather . Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip , poring laboriously over some account books . It was not quite seven o'clock , and he never started for Billy Martin 's before that hour . As he ran his finger slowly and hesitatingly down the column of figures , he heard the kitchen door beyond open and shut , the noise of footsteps crossing the floor and the scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth . Then came the sound of a basket of corncobs being emptied on the smoldering blaze and then the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire . Hiram thought nothing of all this , excepting , in a dim sort of way , that it was Bob , the negro mill hand , or old black Dinah , the housekeeper , and so went on with his calculations .