ten o'clock
Such was the career of Ebenezer Skinner for four years . He oscillated between the dinginess and dulness of the capital as he knew it , and the well-accustomed rurality of his home . For him the historic associations of Edinburgh were as good as naught . He and Sandy Kerr -LRB- Bench Seventeen -RRB- heard the bugles blaring at ten o'clock from the Castle on windy Saturday nights , as they walked up the Bridges , and never stirred a pulse ! They never went into Holyrood , because some one told Ebenezer that there was a shilling to pay . He did not know what a quiet place it was to walk and read in on wet Saturdays , when there is nothing whatever to pay . He read no books , confining himself to his class-books and the local paper , which his mother laboriously addressed and sent to him weekly .