five o'clock
At five o'clock on the morning of the tenth of July , 1860 , the front door of a certain house on Anchor Street , in the ancient seaport town of Rivermouth , might have been observed to open with great caution . This door , as the least imaginative reader may easily conjecture , did not open itself . It was opened by Miss Margaret Callaghan , who immediately closed it softly behind her , paused for a few seconds with an embarrassed air on the stone step , and then , throwing a furtive glance up at the second-story windows , passed hastily down the street towards the river , keeping close to the fences and garden walls on her left . There was a ghost-like stealthiness to Miss Margaret 's movements , though there was nothing whatever of the ghost about Miss Margaret herself .