the summer noon
The dare-devil Major Lally , of the French revolutionary time , is said to have laid his head upon the block with many doubts as to the grace of his position , and with an apology to the executioner if he should have happened to transgress any of the rules of mortuary good-breeding , -- on the ground that `` he never had had his head cut off before ; '' and Colonel Egbert Crawford , never having been married before , may be excused if he had some sort of indefinite impression that all the rooms in the house were full of awful preparations , liable to be run against at any moment , and altogether fatal to matrimonial prospects if accidentally disturbed . So the piazza and the old man furnished him with a means of killing time that was `` devilish dull , '' and at the same time with a certainty of being kept in a place where he could not possibly `` run foul of anything '' or do any harm . The old man had scarcely spoken for half an hour . He had been lulled by the drowsy sounds of the summer noon , and by the growing listlessness of his own nature , into a few moments of doze , in which the Colonel , closing his eyes to the pages of his book , seemed on the point of joining him . Suddenly a rooster , that had strolled around from the barnyard and flown up to a cool location on the top of the garden fence , and under the shade of one of the cherry-trees -LRB- at which elevation no doubt his numerous harem in the yard regarded him with the same reverent respect paid to the Prophet Brigham , when at a distance , by his fifty-six wives and a fraction -RRB- -- suddenly this rooster , forgetting the proprieties of the place and the hour , lazily flapped his big wings and emitted a crow of such magnificent dimensions as might have startled the whole neighborhood . Colonel Egbert Crawford started and opened his eyes : the old man straightened up his shaking head and did likewise . The sound was like an icy sword-blade thrust into a slumbering and tepid fountain -- startling all the water spirits from repose and propriety , -- or like Christmas suddenly obtruded , keen and pure , into the sluggish rest of midsummer .