ten o'clock
However easily Flavia cantered or trotted she could not but sharply remind him of his wounds . He had forty miles to travel before he could reach Schlestadt ; and in the villages on the road there was gossip that day of a man with a tormented face who rode rocking in his saddle as though the furies were at his back . The little town of Schlestadt went to bed betimes . By ten o'clock its burghers were in their night-caps . A belated visitor going home at that hour found his footsteps ring upon the pavement with surprising echoes , and traversed dark street after dark street , seeing in each window , perhaps , a mimic moon , but no other light unless his path chanced to lie through Herzogstrasse . In that street a couple of windows on the first floor showed bright and unabashed , and the curious passer-by could detect upon the blind the shadows of men growing to monstrous giants and dwindling to pigmies according as they approached or retired from the lamp in the room . There were three men in that room booted as for a journey .