midday
A man , emerging suddenly from an alley in the dusk of the early evening , furnished them with a theme for infinite speculation and varied conjecture ; that nine times out of ten the man said , `` Hello , Shrimp ! '' and passed on his way perfectly well known to the little lamplighter was a matter of not the slightest importance . Sometimes , it is true , Mr. Shrimplin told of the salutation , but the man was always a stranger to him , and that he should have spoken , calling him by name , he and Custer agreed only added to the sinister mystery of the encounter . It was midday on that twenty-seventh of November when Mr. Shrimplin killed Murphy of the solitary eye , and he reached the climax of the story just as Mrs. Shrimplin began to prepare the dressing for the small turkey that was to be the principal feature of their four-o'clock dinner . The morning 's scanty fall of snow had been so added to as time passed that now it completely whitened the strip of brown turf in the little side yard beyond the kitchen windows . `` I think , '' said Mr. Shrimplin , `` we are going to see some weather . Well , snow ai n't a bad thing . ''