four o'clock in the morning
`` I ask your pardon and God 's , sir , for the wicked words I said before I left the parlour . R. '' He folded this and addressed it with the proper superscription ; and left it lying there . It was a strange ride that he had back from Tansley next morning after mass . Dick Sampson had met him with the horses in the stable-court at Matstead a little after four o'clock in the morning ; and together they had ridden through the pitch darkness , each carrying a lantern fastened to his stirrup . So complete was the darkness , however , and so small and confined the circle of light cast by the tossing light , that , for all they saw , they might have been riding round and round in a garden . Now trees showed grim and towering for an instant , then gone again ; now their eyes were upon the track , the pools , the rugged ground , the soaked meadow-grass ; half a dozen times the river glimmered on their right , turbid and forbidding . Once there shone in the circle of light the eyes of some beast -- pig or stag ; seen and vanished again .