nine o'clock
He hesitated about returning to the drive . Although he was singularly free from the superstitious fears that would make such a place a haunt of horrors to the average youngster , the notion of sleeping alone below there did not please him , and he had still some hope of hearing Billy 's signal . He was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger , too , and now that it was too late recollected that he might have found a ministering angel in Miss Chris . It would have been an easy matter to have met her when coming through the paddock from chapel at nine o'clock , and an easier matter to have appealed to her tender sympathies with a story of hunger and misfortune . The boy 's thoughts lingered with Miss Chris ; he found a melancholy satisfaction in the belief that she would pity him , and probably shed a few tears over the sorrows of a noble and generous youth driven to crime by persecution , and outlawed through the machinations of an unscrupulous constabulary . So real could he make these sentimental fancies that her keen sorrow for him filled him with acute emotions of self-pity , and a large tear actually rolled down his freckled nose . Suddenly romance was swept out of his mind , and wonder and fear possessed him .