eleven o'clock
Was n't there news enough , with five or ten thousand war-heroes coming to town , without bothering about one poor religious freak ? When you shoot a load of shot at a duck , and the bird comes tumbling down , you do not bother to ask which particular shot it was that hit the target . And so it was with these frantic efforts of ours . One shot must have hit , for at eleven o'clock that morning , when the case of John Doe Carpenter versus the Commonwealth of Western City was reached in Judge Ponty 's court , and the bailiff called the name of the defendant and there was no answer , the magistrate in a single sentence declared the bail forfeited , and passed on to the next case without a word . And all three of our afternoon newspapers reported this incident in an obscure corner on an inside page . The Red Prophet was dead and buried ! I took up Carpenter 's lunch at one o'clock , and discovered , to my dismay , that he had not tasted his breakfast .