a quarter to
ten
It was incredibly picturesque , but it had somehow the look of a fortress rather than of a house . It did not exist only to be beautiful , but had a well-worn beauty of age and use . There was no domestic adornment of flower-bed or garden-border , merely four squares of grass , looking like faded carpets laid on the rather uncompromising pebbles which floored the pathways . The golden hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to ten , and the chimes uttered their sharp , peremptory voices . Two or three young men stood talking at the vaulted gateway , and one or two figures in dilapidated gowns and caps , holding books , fled out of the court . A firm footstep came down one of the stairways ; a man of about forty passed out into the court -- Howard Kennedy , Fellow and Classical Lecturer of the College . His thick curly brown hair showed a trace of grey , his short pointed beard was grizzled , his complexion sanguine , his eyebrows thick .