midnight
Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient about two miles distant . Like the majority of young practitioners in his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a mirror ; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove himself , hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post , shutter hook , or garden paling of the domicile under visitation , or giving pennies to little boys to hold the animal during his stay -- pennies which were well earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind that wore out the patience of the little boys . On this account of travelling alone , the night journeys which Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal enough , a serious apparent perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inaccessible and lonely place , that event should occur in the night . The surgeon , having been of late years a town man , hated the solitary midnight woodland . He was not altogether skilful with the reins , and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths of the trees an accident were to happen , the fact of his being alone might be the death of him . Hence he made a practice of picking up any countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by , and under the disguise of treating him to a nice drive , obtained his companionship on the journey , and his convenient assistance in opening gates . The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of Winterborne , walking leisurely along , as if he had no object in life .