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 firelight , 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 !