noon
Most of them walked in the procession ; but some of them were waiting beside the open grave , that was dug near the grave of that man who believed there was a hole through the earth from pole to pole , and had a perforated stone globe on top of his monument . MY boy used to be afraid of this monument , which stood a long time , or what seemed to him a long time , in the yard of the tombstone cutter before it was put up at the grave of the philosopher who imagined the earth as hollow as much of the life is on it . He was a brave officer in the army which held the region against the Indians in the pioneer times ; he passed the latter part of his life there , and he died and was buried in the Boy 's Town . My boy had to go by the yard when he went to see his grandmother , and even at high noon the sight of the officer 's monument , and the other gravestones standing and leaning about , made his flesh creep and his blood run cold . When there were other boys with him he would stop at the door of the shed , where a large , fair German was sawing slabs of marble with a long saw that had no teeth , and that he eased every now and then with water from a sponge he kept by him ; but if the boy was alone , and it was getting at all late in the afternoon , he always ran by the place as fast as he could . He could hardly have told what he was afraid of , but he must have connected the gravestones with ghosts . -LSB- Illustration : `` HE ALWAYS RAN BY THE PLACE AS FAST AS HE COULD . '' -RSB-