midnight
`` I 'll not get enough until I wilt upon the floor and have to be carried out , '' said Billy , as he held me closer and slid two steps to the right and then back to get me out of the way of Hampton and Harriet Henderson , who were dancing with regardless joy . `` Will you feel that way about church next Sunday ? '' I asked him , but my demand made no apparent dent , for he danced on without answering . At an hour after that of midnight the revelers came home and left me at my gate , by request , to walk alone in the brilliant spring moonlight through my garden to the wide door back of the white pillars . After they had seen me safely started , they glided away and I stood on the steps and watched Nell and Mark reclaim their family from a tall dark figure that carried out two loads to the parental arms . Then the hush that comes upon the world in the midnight hours fell over the Poplars and I stood leaning against one of the tall pillars and reveled in it . Goodloets is one of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies , and in it can be found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent .