five o'clock
One of the sentries might well have peeped in at the window of my room to make sure that I was up to no pranks . He could have seen from the window that my bed was empty . If he had noticed that , he could have unlocked my door to make sure , after which it would not have taken more than a few minutes to start after me . I learned afterwards that the sentry had alarmed the house at a little before five o'clock . The carter , being only half-awake when he came after me , suspected nothing till the other farm-hands came for the horses , at about six o'clock , when , the key being gone , he had to break the lock , vowing that the rattens had took his key from him in the night . My disappearance puzzled everybody , because I had hidden my tracks so carefully that no one noticed at first how the chimney bars had been loosened . No one in that house knew of the secret room , so that the general impression was that I had either squeezed myself through the window , or blown myself out through the keyhole by art-magic .