eleven o'clock
Then began the systematic , earnest effort to induce the governor to commute the sentence to life imprisonment . He declined to interfere . Dick Cronk was doomed . At eleven o'clock on the morning of a bitterly cold Friday in January a grim , sullen group of men , evil-faced fellows whose eyes were heavy with dread , and whose lips hung limp with dejection , crowded around the stove in a squalid , ill-smelling basement room . They spoke but seldom ; their voices were rarely raised above the hoarse half-whisper of anxiety known only to men who wait in patience for a thing of horror to come to pass , an inevitable , remorseless thing from which there is no escape . They shivered as they crouched close to the red-hot stove , notwithstanding the almost unbearable heat of the foul , windowless room in which they were gathered . Their faces were pallid , their eyes bloodshot , their flesh a-quiver .