midnight
Up on the platform there sat Professor Carberry , a little , shrunken figure in black broadcloth , the lean , scholarly old face , blanched with the snows of eighty-odd years , filled with eagerness as he looked down on the little assembled remnant of the old guard . Cousin Bethiah Newell always said that this picture was Jean 's masterpiece , and she got the inspiration for it on this day . Kit sat very erect at her end of the pew , but even she , who prided herself on being unemotional , had tears on her lashes listening to these dear old-time scholars reciting the poetry out of their old fourth and fifth readers . Judge Ellis rose with a radiant light in his eyes and spouted , `` At midnight in his guarded tent , the Turk lay dreaming of the hour , '' and for an encore he rolled out `` Old Ironsides . '' `` Ay , tear her tattered ensign down , Long has it waved on high . '' Cousin Roxy obliged with `` Woodman , spare that tree , '' but for an encore she gave a tender poem of old-time days , called `` Twenty Years Ago . '' Its verses rang in Kit 's head all the way home , and when she learned that Miss Daphne , too , had been one of the old Professor 's scholars , she wrote them down and sent them west to her .