three in the morning
`` That I shall never tell to any one now . Suffice it that I was mistaken . '' Valencia could obtain no further answer ; and so the days ran on , every one becoming more and more intimate , till a certain afternoon , on which they were all to go and pic-nic , under Claude 's pilotage , above the lake of Gwynnant . Scoutbush was to have been with them ; but a heavy day 's rain in the meanwhile swelled the streams into fishing order , so the little man ordered a car , and started at three in the morning for Bettws with Mr. Bowie , who , however loth to give up the arrangement of plates and the extraction of champagne corks , considered his presence by the river-side a natural necessity . `` My dear Miss Clara , ye see , there 'll be nobody to see that his lordship pits on dry stockings ; and he 's always getting over the tops of his water-boots , being young and daft , as we 've all been , and no offence to you ; and to tell you truth , I can stand all temptations -- in moderation , that is , save an ' except the chance o ' cleiking a fish . '' The spot which Claude had chosen for the pic-nic was on one of the lower spurs of that great mountain of The Maiden 's Peak , which bounds the vale of Gwynnant to the south . Above , a wilderness of gnarled volcanic dykes , and purple heather ledges ; below , broken into glens , in which still linger pale green ashwoods , relics of that great primaeval forest in which , in Bess 's days , great Leicester used to rouse the hart with hound and horn .