four o'clock
The suburban-dweller , who shares in both lives , is perhaps a little too ready to pride himself in having learned the lesson of the great metropolis , but the other and homelier lesson is taught so gradually and so unobtrusively , that he often learns it quite unconsciously ; and goes back , perhaps , to his old existence in the city , only to realize that a certain charm has gone out of life which he misses without knowing just what he has lost . He thinks , perhaps , it is exercise he lacks . And it is , indeed -- the exercise of certain gentle sympathies , that thrive as poorly in the town 's crowded life as the country wild-flowers thrive in the flower-pots of tenement-house windows . It was between three and four o'clock of an August night -- a dark , warm , hazy night , breathless , heavy and full of the smell of grass and trees and dew-moistened earth , when a man galloped up one of those long suburban streets , where the houses stand at wide intervals , each behind its trim lawn , or old-fashioned flower-garden , relieved , even in the darkness , against a great rear-wood screen of lofty trees . Up the driveway of one of these he turned , his horse 's hoof-beats dropping clear and sharp on the hard macadam . He reined up at the house and rapped a loud tattoo with the stock of his whip on a pillar of the veranda . It was a minute or two before the noise , loud as it was , had reached the ears of two sleepers in the bedroom , just above his head .