a quarter to twelve
It was not much of a story , and , as I read it , I kept thinking that I could write as good a one . I had had such ideas before , but nothing had come of them . This time , however , I determined to try . In half an hour I had evolved a plot , such as it was , and at a quarter to twelve that night the story was finished . A highwayman was its hero and its scene the great North Road in England . My conceptions of highwaymen and the North Road -- of England , too , for that matter -- were derived from something I had read at some time or other , I suppose ; they must have been . At any rate , I finished that story , addressed the envelope to the editor of the magazine and dropped the envelope and its inclosure in the corner mail-box before I went to bed .