about ten o'clock
He 'd done very well that year -- better than Amos -- and he was taking a matter of one hundred and fifty pounds in cash to Exeter for his man of business to invest for him . And Ernest drove him in to Ashburton , at cocklight of a stormy day , and was going in again that evening to meet his uncle and fetch him home . All went well , and at the appointed time Joe 's nephew set out once more with a light trap and a clever horse , after dark , to meet the evening train . And no more was heard till somewhere about ten o'clock of that night . Then Amos Gregory , just finishing his nightcap and knocking out his pipe to go to bed , much to his astonishment heard somebody banging on the front door of Furze Hill . Guessing it was some night-foundered tramp , he cussed the wanderer to hell ; but cussing was only an ornament in his speech , for a tenderer creature really never lived , and he would n't have turned a stray cat from his door that fierce night , let alone a human . It were n't no tramp , however ; it proved to be his nephew Ernest , and the young man was clad in his oilskins and dripping with the storm rain and so frightened as a rabbit .