midnight
At Sowerby Bridge , a manufacturing town , which , like many others in the same part of England , makes a blot of ugliness on country in itself sternly beautiful , his father had settled as the manager of certain rope-works . Mr. Mallard 's state was not unprosperous , for he had invented a process put in use by his employers , and derived benefit from it . He was a man of habitual gravity , occasionally severe in the rule of his household , very seldom unbending to mirth . Though not particularly robust , he employed his leisure in long walks about the moors , walks sometimes prolonged till after midnight , sometimes begun long before dawn . His acquaintances called him unsociable , and doubtless he was so in the sense that he could not find at Sowerby Bridge any one for whose society be greatly cared . It was even a rare thing for him to sit down with his wife and children for more than a few minutes ; if he remained in the house , he kept apart in a room of his own , musing over , rather than reading , a little collection of books -- one of his favourites being Defoe 's `` History of the Devil . '' He often made ironical remarks , and seemed to have a grim satisfaction when his hearers missed the point .