midnight
Here Wildeve waited , slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place . Along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked together before the wind , which , leaving them in heaps , plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness . Only one sound rose above this din of weather , and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward , from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction . He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck . A very strong doubt had arisen in his mind if Eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather ; yet knowing her nature he felt that she might . `` Poor thing ! 't is like her ill-luck , '' he murmured .