about nine o'clock
And yet there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed , and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day . Who has not known some even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of youth ? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that , having long since ceased to grow , yet held its own without perceptible decline ? Some such trite reflection -- as apposite to the subject as most random reflections are -- passed through the mind of a young man who came out of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine morning in spring , a few years after the Civil War , and started down Front Street toward the market-house . Arriving at the town late the previous evening , he had been driven up from the steamboat in a carriage , from which he had been able to distinguish only the shadowy outlines of the houses along the street ; so that this morning walk was his first opportunity to see the town by daylight . He was dressed in a suit of linen duck -- the day was warm -- a panama straw hat , and patent leather shoes . In appearance he was tall , dark , with straight , black , lustrous hair , and very clean-cut , high-bred features .