nine o'clock
Una 's mother had nearly forgotten both the crime and its consequences ; but upon the spirit of her daughter there appeared to rest a silent and settled sorrow not likely to be diminished or removed . Her cheerfulness had abandoned her , and many an hour did she contrive to spend with Biddy Nulty , eager in the mournful satisfaction of talking over all that affection prompted of her banished lover . We must now beg our readers to accompany us to a scene of a different description from any we have yet drawn . The night of a November day had set in , or rather had advanced so far as nine o'clock , and towards the angle of a small three-cornered field , called by a peculiar coincidence of name , Oona 's Handkerchief , in consequence of an old legend connected with it , might be seen moving a number of straggling figures , sometimes in groups of fours and fives ; sometimes in twos or threes as the case might be , and not unfrequently did a single straggler advance , and , after a few private words , either join the others or proceed alone to a house situated in the angular corner of the field to which we allude . As the district was a remote one , and the night rather dark , several shots might be heard as they proceeded , and several flashes in the pan seen from the rusty arms of those who were probably anxious to pull a trigger for the first time . The country , at the period we write of , be it observed , was in a comparative state of tranquility , and no such thing as a police corps had been heard of or known in the neighborhood . At the lower end of a long , level kind of moor called the Black Park , two figures approached a * kind of gate or pass that opened into it .