eleven o'clock
And while the street is deserted , let us turn the film of events forward , letting them flit by unnoticed past the wedding of Molly Culpepper and Adrian Brownwell until we come to the August day when the railroad came to Sycamore Ridge . Jacob Dolan , sheriff in and for Garrison County for four years , beginning with 1873 , remembered the summer of 1875 to his dying day , as the year when he tore his blue soldier coat , and for twenty-five years , after the fight in which the coat was torn , Dolan never put it on for a funeral or a state occasion , that he did not smooth out the seam that Nellie Logan McHurdie made in mending the rent place , and recall the exigencies of the public service which made it necessary to tear one 's clothes to keep the peace . `` You may state to the court in your own way , '' said the judge at the trial of the sheriff for assault , `` just how the difficulty began . '' `` Well , sir , '' answered Dolan , `` there was a bit of a celebration in town , on August 30 , it being the day the railroad came in , and in honour of the occasion I put on my regimentals , and along about -- say eleven o'clock -- as the crowd began to thicken up around the bank corner , and in front of the hardware store , I was walking along , kind of shoving the way clear for the ladies to pass , when some one behind me says , ` General Hendricks was an old thief , and his son is no better , ' and I turned around and clapt my eye on this gentleman here . I 'd never seen him before in my whole life , but I knew by the bold free gay way he had with his tongue that he was from Minneola and bent on trouble . ` Keep still , ' says I , calm and dignified like , bent on preserving the peace , as was my duty . ` I 'll not , ' says he .