four o'clock in
the afternoon
The sun had risen , and the cold clear air was yielding to its rays . The young man reluctantly turned back , and left the priest to go onward alone , a tall , dark figure in the morning light ; the river running between acacia thickets and rushes on his right . Before long he was forced to leave the course of the stream , and ascend a rugged and precipitous road which mounted southward and westward through oak woods into the mountains between the Leonessa and Gran Sasso , until it reached a shrunken , desolate village , with fine Etruscan and Roman remains left to perish , and a miserable hostelry , with the miserable diligences starting from it on alternate days , the only remains of its former posting activity . There he arrived late in the evening , and broke his fast on a basin of bean soup , then rested on a bench , for he could not bring himself to enter the filthy bed which was alone to be obtained , and spent the following morning examining the ancient ruins , for the conveyance did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon . When that hour came he made one of the travellers , all country folks , who were packed close as pigeons in a crate in the ramshackle , noisy , broken-down vehicle , which lumbered on its way behind its lean and suffering horses , through woods and hills and along mountain passes of a grandeur and a beauty on which the eyes of educated travellers rarely looked . The journey by this conveyance occupied seven hours , and he was obliged to wait five more at that village station which was the nearest point at which he could meet the train which went from Terni to Rome . Only parliamentary trains stop at such obscure places ; and this one seemed to him slower even than the diligence had been .