seven o'clock
`` For this scandalous contempt of the Muses , '' said I soberly , `` I shall punish you by frizzling your share of the ham to a cinder . '' During my schoolboy days I had roamed the countryside till I knew it as an open book , and this minute knowledge was our salvation now . The immediate need was food , and food obtained without price and without our being observed by anyone . At seven o'clock on a hard winter morning in open country , this seemed to require a miracle . As a matter of fact , it was as easy as shelling peas . Since crossing the heath we had been travelling nearer to one of the main roads , that leading out of the east gate to the town , and now we got our first glimpse of it lying like a broad , brown ribbon half-way down the slope of a very steep hill . In the upper half , this hill was pretty well wooded and the road cut clean through the wood , but between us and the wood there lay the level crest of the hill , cut by hedges into several fields , and crossed by a rough cart-track leading past a roomy , one-storied cottage , grey-walled and brown-thatched , and on through the wood into the main road .