noon
`` And you are right good to do it ! Good night , dear Aunt Laura ! Good night , grandma ! '' Mr. French had left the hotel at noon that day as free as air , and he slept well that night , with no sense of the forces that were to constrain his life . And yet the events of the day had started the growth of a dozen tendrils , which were destined to grow , and reach out , and seize and hold him with ties that do not break . _ Seven _ The constable who had arrested old Peter led his prisoner away through alleys and quiet streets -- though for that matter all the streets of Clarendon were quiet in midafternoon -- to a guardhouse or calaboose , constructed of crumbling red brick , with a rusty , barred iron door secured by a heavy padlock . As they approached this structure , which was sufficiently forbidding in appearance to depress the most lighthearted , the strumming of a banjo became audible , accompanying a mellow Negro voice which was singing , to a very ragged ragtime air , words of which the burden was something like this : _ `` W'at 's de use er my wo ` kin ' so hahd ?