one o’clock
It was one of the old English timber and plaster houses , many of which are of unknown antiquity ; as was the case with a portion of this house , although other portions had been renewed , repaired , or added , within a century . It had , originally , the Warden said , stood all round an enclosed courtyard , like the great houses of the Continent ; but now one side of the quadrangle had long been removed , and there was only a front , with two wings ; the beams of old oak being picked out with black , and three or four gables in a line forming the front , while the wings seemed to be stone . It was the timber portion that was most ancient . A clock was on the midmost gable , and pointed now towards one o'clock . The whole scene impressed Redclyffe , not as striking , but as an abode of ancient peace , where generation after generation of the same family had lived , each making the most of life , because the life of each successive dweller there was eked out with the lives of all who had hitherto lived there , and had in it equally those lives which were to come afterwards ; so that there was a rare and successful contrivance for giving length , fulness , body , substance , to this thin and frail matter of human life . And , as life was so rich in comprehensiveness , the dwellers there made the most of it for the present and future , each generation contriving what it could to add to the cosiness , the comfortableness , the grave , solid respectability , the sylvan beauty , of the house with which they seemed to be connected both before and after death . The family had its home there ; not merely the individual .