eleven o'clock
For the first time he began to entertain dark doubts concerning those columns of advice to young men in the `` Sunday Echo . '' Once back at the factory , he plunged into his work with characteristic thoroughness . It was strangely hot and still , and somewhere out on the horizon was a grumbling discontent . It was raining hard at eleven o'clock when he boarded a car for Butternut Lane , and by the time he reached the Purdy 's corner , the lightning was playing sharply in the northwest . He let himself in the empty house and felt his way up to his room , but he did not go to bed . Instead , he sat at his table and with stiff awkward fingers wrote letter after letter , each of which he tossed impatiently into the waste-basket . They were all to Nance , and they all tried in vain to express the pent-up emotion that had filled his heart for years .