noon
The arrival of the newspaper had already become an event of the deepest importance to me . Unreasonable as it was to expect any tidings of George at so early a date , I began , nevertheless , on this first of our days of suspense , to look for the name of his ship in the columns of telegraphic news . The mere mechanical act of looking was some relief to my overstrained feelings , although I might have known , and did know , that the search , for the present , could lead to no satisfactory result . Toward noon I shut myself up with my collection of manuscripts to revise them for the last time . Our exertions had thus far produced but six of the necessary ten stories . As they were only , however , to be read , one by one , on six successive evenings , and as we could therefore count on plenty of leisure in the daytime , I was in no fear of our failing to finish the little series . Of the six completed stories I had written two , and had found a third in the form of a collection of letters among my papers .