eight o'clock
Out in the field the corn was well up , and the men were hoeing . It was a hot morning in the shed chamber , and the woolen rags were dusty and hot to handle . Byfleet people knew each other well , and when this mysteriously absent person did not return to the town-farm at the end of a week , public interest became much excited ; and presently it was ascertained that Betsey Lane was neither making a visit to her friends the Deckers on Birch Hill , nor to any nearer acquaintances ; in fact , she had disappeared altogether from her wonted haunts . Nobody remembered to have seen her pass , hers had been such an early flitting ; and when somebody thought of her having gone away by train , he was laughed at for forgetting that the earliest morning train from South Byfleet , the nearest station , did not start until long after eight o'clock ; and if Betsey had designed to be one of the passengers , she would have started along the road at seven , and been seen and known of all women . There was not a kitchen in that part of Byfleet that did not have windows toward the road . Conversation rarely left the level of the neighborhood gossip : to see Betsey Lane , in her best clothes , at that hour in the morning , would have been the signal for much exercise of imagination ; but as day after day went by without news , the curiosity of those who knew her best turned slowly into fear , and at last Peggy Bond again gave utterance to the belief that Betsey had either gone out in the early morning and put an end to her life , or that she had gone to the Centennial . Some of the people at table were moved to loud laughter , -- it was at supper-time on a Sunday night , -- but others listened with great interest .