about seven o'clock
I could hardly understand the rude dialect in which the direction to old Bridget 's house was given . ` Yo ' see yon furleets , ' all run together , gave me no idea that I was to guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the Hall , occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward , while the Squire , now four or five and twenty , was making the grand tour . However , at last , I reached Bridget 's cottage -- a low , moss-grown place ; the palings that had once surrounded it were broken and gone ; and the underwood of the forest came up to the walls , and must have darkened the windows . It was about seven o'clock -- not late to my London notions -- but , after knocking for some time at the door and receiving no reply , I was driven to conjecture that the occupant of the house was gone to bed . So I betook myself to the nearest church I had seen , three miles back on the road I had come , sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind ; and early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme , by a field-path which my host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I had taken the night before . It was a cold , sharp morning ; my feet left prints in the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground ; nevertheless , I saw an old woman , whom I instinctively suspected to be the object of my search , in a sheltered covert on one side of my path . I lingered and watched her .