eight o'clock
You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze , which eddies about you like a flood , so that you all have the look of visions , or people that dwell only in the fire light , and will vanish from existence , as completely as your own shadows , when the flame shall sink among the embers . Hark ! let me listen for the swell of the surf ; it should be audible a mile inland , on a night like this . Yes ; there I catch the sound , but only an uncertain murmur , as if a good way down over the beach ; though , by the almanac , it is high tide at eight o'clock , and the billows must now be dashing within thirty yards of our door . Ah ! the old man 's ears are failing him ; and so is his eyesight , and perhaps his mind ; else you would not all be so shadowy , in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire . How strangely the Past is peeping over the shoulders of the Present !