about six o'clock on July second
It could have happened to anybody -- well , almost anybody . Anybody , say , who was a telephone lineman for the Batesville and Rappahannock Telephone Company , and who happened to be engaged to Rosie , and who had been told admiringly by Rosie that a man as smart as he was ought to make something wonderful of himself . And , of course , anybody who 'd taken that seriously and had been puttering around on a device to make private conversations on a party-line telephone possible , and almost had the trick . It began about six o'clock on July second , when Sam was up a telephone pole near Bridge 's Run . He was hunting for the place where that party line had gone dead . He 'd hooked in his lineman 's phone and he could n't raise Central , so he was just going to start looking for the break when his phone rang back , though the line had checked dead . -LSB- Illustration -RSB- Startled , he put the receiver to his ear .