two o’clock in the afternoon
` No -- it was only nineteen and three quarters , ' replied his friend , with abstracted literalness . He went the next morning . Since the days of his youth a railway had been constructed along the pebble bank , so that , except when the rails were washed away by the tides , which was rather often , the peninsula was quickly accessible . At two o'clock in the afternoon he was rattled along by this new means of locomotion , under the familiar monotonous line of bran-coloured stones , and he soon emerged from the station , which stood as a strange exotic among the black lerrets , the ruins of the washed-away village , and the white cubes of oolite , just come to view after burial through unreckonable geologic years . In entering upon the pebble beach the train had passed close to the ruins of Henry the Eighth 's or Sandsfoot Castle , whither Avice was to have accompanied him on the night of his departure . Had she appeared the primitive betrothal , with its natural result , would probably have taken place ; and , as no islander had ever been known to break that compact , she would have become his wife . Ascending the steep incline to where the quarrymen were chipping just as they had formerly done , and within sound of the great stone saws , he looked southward towards the Beal .