ten
      o’clock
Wolfert , who , from a dark corner of the room , had listened with intense eagerness to all this talk about buried treasure , looked with mingled awe and reverence on this bold buccaneer , for such he really suspected him to be . There was a chinking of gold and a sparkling of jewels in all his stories about the Spanish Main that gave a value to every period , and Wolfert would have given any thing for the rummaging of the ponderous sea-chest , which his imagination crammed full of golden chalices and crucifixes and jolly round bags of doubloons . The dead stillness that had fallen upon the company was at length interrupted by the stranger , who pulled out a prodigious watch of curious and ancient workmanship , and which in Wolferts ' eyes had a decidedly Spanish look . On touching a spring it struck ten o'clock ; upon which the sailor called for his reckoning , and having paid it out of a handful of outlandish coin , he drank off the remainder of his beverage , and without taking leave of any one , rolled out of the room , muttering to himself as he stamped up-stairs to his chamber . It was some time before the company could recover from the silence into which they had been thrown . The very footsteps of the stranger , which were heard now and then as he traversed his chamber , inspired awe . Still the conversation in which they had been engaged was too interesting not to be resumed .