quarter before six
`` I think I 've spoiled Winstanley 's coverts for this year , at any rate , '' he said to himself , as he tramped homewards in the early darkness , with no small hazard of losing himself in one of those ghostly plantations , which were all exactly alike , and in which a man might walk all day long without meeting anything nearer humanity than a trespassing forest pony that had leapt a fence in quest of more sufficing food than the scanty herbage of the open woods . Lord Mallow got on better than might have been expected . He went east when he ought to have gone west , and found himself in Queen 's Bower when he fancied himself in Gretnam Wood ; but he did not walk more than half-a-dozen miles out of his way , and he got home somehow at last , which was much for a stranger to the ground . The stable clock was chiming the quarter before six when he went into the hall , where Vixen had left him in anger that morning . The great wood fire was burning gaily , and Captain Winstanley was sitting in a Glastonbury chair in front of it . `` Went for the birds after all , old fellow , '' he said , without looking round , recognising the tread of Lord Mallow 's shooting-boots . `` You found it too dismal in the house , I suppose ?