midnight
As society 's first public and pointed rejection of him the slight had rankled with the son of Basset , and grievously it wore on him that Hetty Rhodes was going , with the man who had been his earliest and most persistent accuser : Hetty , prettiest of all the bunch-grass belles , who never reproached nor quarreled , but judged people with her smile and let them go . He had not complained , though he had her promise , -- one of her promises , -- nor asked a hearing in his own defense . The sons of Basset were many and poor ; their stock had dwindled upon the range ; her men-folk condemned him , and Hetty believed , or seemed to believe , as the others . Had she forgotten the night when two men 's horses stood at her father 's fence , -- the Basset boy 's and that of him who was afterward his accuser ; and the other 's horse was unhitched when the evening was but half spent , and furiously ridden away , while the Basset boy 's stood at the rails till close upon midnight ? Had the coincidence escaped her that from this night , of one man 's rage and another 's bliss , the ugly charge had dated ? Of these things a girl may not testify . They met in town on the Saturday before the dance , Hetty buying her dancing-shoes at the back of the store , where the shoe-cases framed in a snug little alcove for the exhibition of a `` fit . ''