twenty minutes
past nine
In that hope I have written these pages . At exactly half past nine o'clock on the morning of Saturday , August 26 , 1865 , Master Charles Summerton , aged five years , disappeared mysteriously from his paternal residence on Folsom Street , San Francisco . At twenty-five minutes past nine he had been observed , by the butcher , amusing himself by going through that popular youthful exercise known as `` turning the crab , '' a feat in which he was singularly proficient . At a court of inquiry summarily held in the back parlor at 10.15 , Bridget , cook , deposed to have detected him at twenty minutes past nine , in the felonious abstraction of sugar from the pantry , which , by the same token , had she known what was a-comin ' , she 'd have never previnted . Patsey , a shrill-voiced youth from a neighboring alley , testified to have seen `` Chowley '' at half past nine , in front of the butcher 's shop round the corner , but as this young gentleman chose to throw out the gratuitous belief that the missing child had been converted into sausages by the butcher , his testimony was received with some caution by the female portion of the court , and with downright scorn and contumely by its masculine members . But whatever might have been the hour of his departure , it was certain that from half past ten A. M. until nine P. M. , when he was brought home by a policeman , Charles Summerton was missing . Being naturally of a reticent disposition , he has since resisted , with but one exception , any attempt to wrest from him a statement of his whereabouts during that period .