About eleven o'clock
The evening passed over , and the inhabitants of the farmhouse went early to bed . Robert tossed about fuming on his . He had not undressed . About eleven o'clock , after all had been still for more than an hour , he took his shoes in one hand and the brown parcel in the other , and descending the stairs like a thief , undid the quiet wooden bar that secured the door , and let himself out . All was darkness , for the moon was not yet up , and he felt a strange sensation of ghostliness in himself -- awake and out of doors , when he ought to be asleep and unconscious in bed . He had never been out so late before , and felt as if walking in the region of the dead , existing when and where he had no business to exist . For it was the time Nature kept for her own quiet , and having once put her children to bed -- hidden them away with the world wiped out of them -- enclosed them in her ebony box , as George Herbert says -- she did not expect to have her hours of undress and meditation intruded upon by a venturesome school-boy .