4:15
Travelling in the interests of the well-known firm in which it is my lot to be a junior partner , I had been called upon to visit not only the capitals of Russia and Poland , but had found it also necessary to pass some weeks among the trading ports of the Baltic ; whence it came that the year was already far spent before I again set foot on English soil , and that , instead of shooting pheasants with him , as I had hoped , in October , I came to be my friend 's guest during the more genial Christmas-tide . My voyage over , and a few days given up to business in Liverpool and London , I hastened down to Clayborough with all the delight of a school-boy whose holidays are at hand . My way lay by the Great East Anglian line as far as Clayborough station , where I was to be met by one of the Dumbleton carriages and conveyed across the remaining nine miles of country . It was a foggy afternoon , singularly warm for the 4th of December , and I had arranged to leave London by the 4:15 express . The early darkness of winter had already closed in ; the lamps were lighted in the carriages ; a clinging damp dimmed the windows , adhered to the door-handles , and pervaded all the atmosphere ; while the gas-jets at the neighbouring book-stand diffused a luminous haze that only served to make the gloom of the terminus more visible . Having arrived some seven minutes before the starting of the train , and , by the connivance of the guard , taken sole possession of empty compartment , I lighted my travelling-lamp , made myself particularly snug , and settled down to the undisturbed enjoyment of a book and a cigar . Great , therefore , was my disappointment when , at the last moment , a gentleman came hurrying along the platform , glanced into my carriage , opened the locked door with a private key , a stepped in .