About nine o'clock
Ask any nigger or dog in the county , and they 'll tell you . She 's our ` dopted daughter , man , off to Bellwood for her second year , and 'll be home the fifth of June , God bless her ! '' Like most country folks , my new friends went to bed shortly after sundown . About nine o'clock , I took my pipe and my tobacco-pouch , and crept noiselessly out to the front porch . I had noticed a quaint settee there upon my arrival that morning , and I had no trouble in finding it now , for a ghostly moonlight had settled over everything . My mind was confronted by a question of decidedly more moment than any under which it had at any time before labored , and I had to think it out before I could sleep . If my cherished and faithful pipe , together with solitude and the wondrous silence of a night in spring , could not bring a solution to me , then the question was certainly beyond me . ''