midnight
Between us and the dwelling house there was a disused pigsty . At about a quarter to eleven o'clock a man , with a red setter dog at his heels and a fowling piece on his arm , came sneaking up , and crept into the sty . Then there was another long spell of silence , not broken , but rather intensified , by the words which I whispered to Fred Harcourt that the fellow who crept into the sty was Kit Kermode , and that he could be after no good . At midnight a cock crew at the far end of the village , and a dog barked . Then there was silence again , save that every now and again a sedge warbler , far away by the stream near Shenvarla , sang a faintly audible song . Our position on the slope of the foot-hill at Gordon House was between the village and the hills which girt the sea coast . This made my theory of the sleep-walking to the cliffs more plausible .