midnight
So the passing year had to take a fine brush and paint upon the small , wistful face a fleeting shadow , the mere ghost of a sadness that came and went as she watched and waited for the father love . And Judge Thomas Van Dorn , the punctilious , gay , resistless , young Tom Van Dorn was deaf to the deeper voices that called to him and beckoned him to rest his soul . And soon upon the winds that roam the world and carry earth dreams back to ghosts , and bring ghosts of what we would be back to our dreams -- the roaming winds bore away the passing year , but they could not take the shadows that it left upon the child 's tender heart . Now , when the old year with all its work lay down in the innumerable company of its predecessors , and the bells rang and the whistles blew in South Harvey to welcome in the new year , the midnight sky was blazoned with the great torches from the smelter chimneys , and the pumps in the oil wells kept up their dolorous whining and complaining , like great insects battening upon an abandoned world . In South Harvey the lights of the saloons and the side of the dragon 's spawn glowed and beckoned men to death . Money tinkled over the bars , and whispered as it was crumpled in the claws of the dragon . For money the scurrying human ants hurried along the dark , half-lighted streets from the ant hills over the mines .