noon
Unless the roofs blew away , and all were buried in drifts , there was safety , if not comfort , in the sheltered flats below the bluffs . But the telegraph wires went with the first hour . The stage , of course , could n't be hoped to return from town , and , so far as getting news from the surrounding universe was concerned , Fort Cushing might as well have been in Nova Zembla . And the Sumters , three , with Miriam Arnold , had set forth at noon , intending to intercept the east-bound express , and the colonel 's spirit was raging in sympathy with the storm , and in spite of his wife , for some one had started a tale that Sumter and his household had ostentatiously called upon Robert Ray Lanier , in close arrest , in utter disfavor and inferential disgrace . Now , while an officer in arrest may not quit his quarters under seven days , and may not even thereafter visit his commanding officer unless ordered , or his brother officers unless authorized by that magnate , there is no regulation prohibiting other officers or their households visiting him . Nevertheless , they who publicly do so lay themselves liable to the imputation of sympathizing with the accused at the expense of the accuser , and some commanding officers are so sensitive that they look upon such demonstrations as utterly subversive of discipline , and aimed directly at them . And of such was Colonel Button , a brave soldier , a gentleman at heart , a kind , if crotchety , commander , and a lenient man rather than a disciplinarian .