nearly midnight
`` O no . '' `` What , then ? '' Gabriel , perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller 's indifference , glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge , and said , `` Vanity . '' It was nearly midnight on the eve of St. Thomas 's , the shortest day in the year . A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill whereon Oak had watched the yellow waggon and its occupant in the sunshine of a few days earlier . Norcombe Hill -- not far from lonely Toller-Down -- was one of the spots which suggest to a passer-by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible as nearly as any to be found on earth . It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil -- an ordinary specimen of those smoothly-outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion , when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down .