the hour of
ten
Why wait for night , then ? '' So I stood awhile debating within myself , then , catching up my knotted bludgeon , I set off along the stream incontinent , following a path I had trodden many a time when but a lad ; a path that led on through mazy thickets , shady dells and green coppices dappled with sunlight and glad with the trilling melody of birds ; but ever as I went , before my eyes was a man who twisted in my grasp and died , over and over again , and in my ears the sounds of his agony . And ever as I went trees reached out arms as if to stay me and bushes stretched forth little , thorny fingers that caught my garments as if to hinder me from my purpose . But I brushed them aside with my scarred arms or beat them down with my heavy staff , o'er-leaping hedge and ditch and fallen tree until I reached the highway , and even as I came there a distant clock chimed the hour of ten . I quickened my pace , twirling my staff as I went , so that the two or three wayfarers I chanced to meet drew from my neighbourhood and eyed me mightily askance . Having gone thus some mile or so , I came to a wall that bordered the road , a high and mossy wall , and following this , to a pair of gates set well back from the highway , with pillars of stone each surmounted by a couchant leopard carved in the stone . Now these gates were of iron , very lofty and strong and fast shut , but besides these was a smaller gate or postern of wood hard by the gatehouse where stood a lusty fellow in fair livery , picking his teeth with a straw and staring at the square toes of his shoes .