noon
Then I recovered Euonymus and about ten that night the five of us met on the bank of a creek . Near its farther shore , on a lonely railroad siding , we found a waiting freight-train and stole into one of its empty cars ; and when at close of the next day hunger drove us out our pursuers were beating the bush a hundred miles behind . Fed from a negro-cabin and guided by the stars , we fled all of another night afoot , and on the following day lost Mingo . At broad noon , with an overseer and his gang close by in a corn-field , the seductions of a melon-patch overcame him and he howled away his freedom in the jaws of a bear-trap . His father and mother wept dumb tears and laid their faces to the ground in prayer . Euonymus was frantic . With all her superior sanity , she would not have left the region could she have persuaded us to go on without her .