midnight
The voracious , insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all , and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics , caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not a few trodden under foot . The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains , as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits , and were easily distinguishable from other `` goods , '' as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley . The splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual distance , and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep in the night with a notion that the thundering trains were going to run right over the house . On the night in question I had not heard Miss Flipp return from her midnight tryst , though all the luggage trains had passed and it neared the time of the first division of the up or citywards mail from the west , which was the earliest train to arrive in town from the country daily . It passed Noonoon in the vicinity of 4 A.M. -- a radiant hour in the summer dawn , but then in winter , the time when bed is most alluring , when the passengers ' breath congeals on the window-panes , they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold , and give yet one more twist to their comforters and another tug at their ` possum or wallaby rugs . This train passed with its shaking thunder , drew into Noonoon for refreshments , then on and on with noisy energy , but still Miss Flipp did not return . I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion , or that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a passing train , or mayhap I had snoozed for a moment , or perhaps an hour , as the unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do ; and ceasing to be on the alert any longer , I really slept .