ten at night
Throughout forty years his had been the voice first heard in that mountain home when the earliest gleams of morning struggled through the deep recesses of the low mullioned windows . Perhaps on the day following market day he sometimes lay an hour longer ; but his stern rule of life spared none , and himself least of all . If at sixty his powerful limbs were less supple than of old , if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had become tipped with the hoar frost , he had relaxed nothing of his rigid self-government on that account . When the clock in the kitchen had struck ten at night , Angus had risen up , whatever his occupation , whatever his company , and retired to rest . And the day had hardly dawned when he was astir in the morning , rousing first the men and next the women of his household . Every one had waited for his call . There had been no sound more familiar than that of his firm footstep , followed by the occasional creak of the old timbers , breaking the early stillness .