seven o'clock
Mr. Pinkham , who was taking tea that evening at the Danas ' , threw the family into a panic by asserting his belief that this was merely the first of a series of artistic assassinations in the manner of those Memorable Murders recorded by De Quincey . Mr. Pinkham may have said this to impress the four Dana girls with the variety of his reading , but the recollection of De Quincey 's harrowing paper had the effect of so unhinging the young school-master that when he found himself , an hour or two afterwards , in the lonely , unlighted street he flitted home like a belated ghost , and was ready to drop at every tree-box . The next forenoon a new hand was taken on at Slocum 's Yard . The new hand , who had come on foot from South Millville , at which town he had been set down by the seven o'clock express that morning , was placed in the apprentice department , -- there were five or six apprentices now . Though all this was part of an understood arrangement , Mr. Slocum nearly doubted the fidelity of his own eyes when Mr. Taggett , a smooth-faced young fellow of one and twenty , if so old , with all the traits of an ordinary workman down to the neglected fingernails , stepped up to the desk to have the name of Blake entered on the pay-roll . Either by chance or by design , Mr. Taggett had appeared but seldom on the streets of Stillwater ; the few persons who had had anything like familiar intercourse with him in his professional capacity were precisely the persons with whom his present movements were not likely to bring him into juxtaposition , and he ran slight risk of recognition by others . With his hair closely cropped , and the overhanging brown mustache removed , the man was not so much disguised as transformed .