three o'clock in the morning
His meditations were broken in upon by a negro boy with an open hack , who volunteered to `` take him up for fifty cents . '' It sounded reasonable . Ben got in and they moved slowly down the narrow pier , the horses ' hoofs clumping lazily on the wooden pavement . Turning past the alley of Thames Street , still alight at three o'clock in the morning , Ben stopped at the suggestion of his driver and left his bag at a hotel , and then they went on up the hill , past the tower of the Skeleton in Armor , past old houses with tall , pillared porticoes , reminiscent of the days when the South patronized Newport , and turned into Bellevue Avenue -- past shops with names familiar to Fifth Avenue , past a villa with bright-eyed owls on the gateposts , past many large , silent houses and walled gardens . The air was very cool , and now and then the scent of some flowering bush trailed like a visible cloud across their path . Then suddenly the whole avenue was full of little red lights , like the garden in `` Faust '' when Mephistopheles performs his magic on it . Here and there the huge headlights of a car shone on the roadway , magnifying every rut in the asphalt , and bringing out strange , vivid shades in the grass and the hydrangea bushes .