midnight
But my Englishman was either a very honest fellow , or else extremely thirsty , and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position . Now , the English sentry in Castile and the wounded hero in the Durham public-house were one and the same person ; and if he had been a little less drunk , or myself less lively in getting away , the travels of M. St. Ives might have come to an untimely end . I suppose this woke me up ; it stirred in me besides a spirit of opposition , and in spite of cold , darkness , the highwaymen and the footpads , I determined to walk right on till breakfast-time : a happy resolution , which enabled me to observe one of those traits of manners which at once depict a country and condemn it . It was near midnight when I saw , a great way ahead of me , the light of many torches ; presently after , the sound of wheels reached me , and the slow tread of feet , and soon I had joined myself to the rear of a sordid , silent , and lugubrious procession , such as we see in dreams . Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in unbroken silence ; and in their midst a cart , and in the cart , on an inclined platform , the dead body of a man -- the centre-piece of this solemnity , the hero whose obsequies we were come forth at this unusual hour to celebrate . It was but a plain , dingy old fellow of fifty or sixty , his throat cut , his shirt turned over as though to show the wound . Blue trousers and brown socks completed his attire , if we can talk so of the dead .