four o'clock
If any one replied to her , he had no recollection of it , for after that he saw the dance and heard the music , and then events seemed to slip along without registering in his memory . There must have been the fifth and the sixth of July in 1873 , for certainly there was the seventh , and that was Sunday ; he remembered that well enough , for in the morning there was a council in his office to discuss ways and means for the week 's work in the county-seat trouble . Tuesday was the day which the new law designated as the one when the levy must be made for the court-house improvements that would hold the county-seat in Sycamore Ridge . At four o'clock , after the Sunday council , John and Bob drove out of Sheriff Jake Dolan 's stable with his best two-seated buggy , and told him they would be back from Minneola at midnight or thereabout after taking Jane Mason home , and the two boys drove down Main Street with the girls , waving to every one with their hats , while the girls waved their parasols , and the town smiled ; for though all the world loves a lover , in Sycamore Ridge it has been the custom , since the days when Philemon Ward first took Miss Lucy out to drive , for all the town to jeer at lovers as they pass down street in buggies and carriages ! And so thirty years slipped from Barclay as he stood in the doorway of his car looking at the Arizona stars . A flicker of light high up in the sky-line seemed to move . It was the headlight of a train coming over the mountain .