midnight
You pass instantly from town to country ; there is no transition as in a small country town , no soft gradations of wider lawns and orchards , with houses gradually becoming less dense , but a dead stop . I believe the people who live there mostly go into the City . I have seen once or twice a laden ` bus bound thitherwards . But however that may be , I ca n't conceive a greater loneliness in a desert at midnight than there is there at midday . It is like a city of the dead ; the streets are glaring and desolate , and as you pass it suddenly strikes you that this too is part of London . Well , a year or two ago there was a doctor living there ; he had set up his brass plate and his red lamp at the very end of one of those shining streets , and from the back of the house , the fields stretched away to the north . I do n't know what his reason was in settling down in such an out-of-the-way place , perhaps Dr. Black , as we will call him , was a far-seeing man and looked ahead .