midnight
When he got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee , very quiet , having papers drawn to have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them , away yonder at a certain time , and then in the meantime get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day -- it was somehow that way -- mercy how the man would have made money ! Negroes would have gone up to four prices . But after he 'd spent money and worked hard , and traveled hard , and had heaps of negroes all contracted for , and everything going along just right , he could n't get the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled . And there in Kentucky , when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years , and Beriah Sellers saw at a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business , why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel . Oceans of money in it -- anybody could see that . But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull out -- and then when they put the new cog wheel in they 'd overlooked something somewhere and it was n't any use -- the troublesome thing would n't go . That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the world ; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about .