nine o'clock
It was as if man , with his imperious interventions , had set those thin steel parallels as an irrefragable boundary to the mutual encroachments of forest and desert , tree and cactus . A single , straggling trail squirmed its way into the woodland . One might have surmised that it was winding hopefully if blindly toward the noble mountain peak shimmering in white splendor , mystic and wonderful , sixty miles away , but seeming in that lucent air to be brooding closely over all the varied loveliness below . Though nine o'clock had struck on the brisk little station-clock , there was still a tang of night chill left . The station-agent came out , carrying a chair which he set down in the sunniest corner of the platform . He looked to be hardly more than a boy , but firm-knit and self-confident . His features were regular , his fairish hair slightly wavy , and in his expression there was a curious and incongruous suggestion of settledness , of acceptance , of satisfaction with life as he met it , which an observer of men would have found difficult to reconcile with his youth and the obvious intelligence of the face .