about three o'clock
He was nearly six feet high , and strongly made , and was known to be a much finer man than the Secretary of Legation , who was rather small , and supposed to be not very robust . Our lonely man was a great walker , and had investigated every lane and pathway , and almost every hedge within ten miles of Dillsborough before he had resided there two years ; but his favourite rambles were all in the neighbourhood of Bragton . As there was no one living in the house , -- no one but the old housekeeper who had lived there always , -- he was able to wander about the place as he pleased . On the Tuesday afternoon , after the meeting of the Dillsborough Club which has been recorded , he was seated , about three o'clock , on the rail of the foot-bridge over the Dill , with a long German pipe hanging from his mouth . He was noted throughout the whole country for this pipe , or for others like it , such a one usually being in his mouth as he wandered about . The amount of tobacco which he had smoked since his return to these parts , exactly in that spot , was considerable , for there he might have been found at some period of the afternoon at least three times a week . He would sit on this rail for half an hour looking down at the sluggish waters of the little river , rolling the smoke out of his mouth at long intervals , and thinking perhaps of the great book which he was supposed to be writing .