eight o'clock
He stood there listening for a few minutes , transfixed , and finally , turning round , he allowed his strange companion to walk slowly beside him back to Laggan . Oh ! the freshness of the morning on Lake Louise ! It was barely eight o'clock , yet Elizabeth Merton had already taken her coffee on the hotel verandah , and was out wandering by herself . The hotel , which is nearly six thousand feet above the sea , had only just been opened for its summer guests , and Elizabeth and her party were its first inmates . Anderson indeed had arranged their coming , and was to have brought them hither himself . But on the night of the party 's return to Laggan he had been hastily summoned by telegraph to a consultation of engineers on a difficult matter of railway grading in the Kootenay district .