five minutes past twelve
Also , in the course of his three-quarters of an hour he had considered , for perhaps the hundredth time since he had come to the age of discretion , what exactly three lives between a man and a title stood for . Lord Talgarth was old and gouty ; Archie was not married , and showed no signs of it ; and Frank -- well , Frank was always adventurous and always in trouble . Well , I have set down the points , after all . But it must not be thought that the gentleman with the pointed brown beard and thoughtful eyes , who at five minutes past twelve went up the two steps into the smoking-room , locked the doors , as he had been directed , took up his candle and went to bed , went with an uneasy conscience , or , in fact , was a villain in any way whatever . The first spot in Frank 's pilgrimage which I have been able to visit and identify in such a way that I am able to form to myself a picture of his adventure more or less complete in all its parts , lies about ten miles north-west of Doncaster , in a little valley , where curiously enough another pilgrim named Richard lived for a little while nearly six hundred years ago . Up to the time of Frank 's coming there , in the season of hay-making , numberless little incidents of his experience stand out , vivid , indeed , but fragmentary , yet they do not form to my mind a coherent whole . I think I understand to some extent the process by which he became accustomed to ordinary physical hard living , into which the initiation began with his series of almost wholly sleepless nights and heavy sleep-burdened days .