Nine o'clock
All the way to the ` Three Jolly Anglers ' and during the rest of the evening the thought of the little desolate figure haunted me , so much so that , having sent away my dinner untasted , I took pen and ink and wrote him a letter , enclosing with it my penknife , which I had often seen him regard with `` the eye of desire , '' despite the blade he had broken upon a certain memorable occasion . This done , I became possessed of a determination to send some message to Lisbeth also -- just a few brief words which should yet reveal to her something of the thoughts I bore her ere I passed out of her life forever . For over an hour I sat there , chewing the stem of my useless pipe and racking my bran , but the `` few brief words '' obstinately refused to come . Nine o'clock chimed mournfully from the Norman tower of the church hard by , yet still my pen was idle and the paper before me blank ; also I became conscious of a tapping somewhere close at hand , now stopping , now beginning again , whose wearisome iteration so irritated my fractious nerves that I flung down my pen and rose . The noise seemed to come from the vicinity of the window . Crossing to it , therefore , I flung the casement suddenly open , and found myself staring into a round face , in which were set two very round eyes and a button of a nose , the whole surmounted by a shock of red hair . '' ` Allo , Mr. Uncle Dick ! ''