two o'clock
in the afternoon
None of them had any appearance of permanence , and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them . The main street was a deeply rutted road , now frozen hard , which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain `` elevator '' at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end . On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings ; the general merchandise stores , the two banks , the drug store , the feed store , the saloon , the post-office . The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow , but at two o'clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers , having come back from dinner , were keeping well behind their frosty windows . The children were all in school , and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats , with their long caps pulled down to their noses . Some of them had brought their wives to town , and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another . At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses , harnessed to farm wagons , shivered under their blankets .