midnight
He turned with the words , the impulse of the stricken creature urging him , and ignoring the remonstrance which Mrs. Rickett had barely begun he made headlong for the door , dragged it open , and was gone . He went past his little playmate in the yard , shambling blindly for the open , deaf to the baby 's cry of welcome , insensible to everything but the bitter burden of his pain . He slammed the gate behind him and set off at a lumbering run down the glaring road . The evening sun smote full in his face as he went ; but it might have been midnight , for he neither saw nor felt . Instinct alone guided him -- the instinct of the wild creature , hunted by disaster , wounded to the heart , that must be alone with its agony and its fruitless strife against fate . He went up the cliff-path , but he did not follow it far . Something drew him down the narrow cleft that led to the spot where first he had seen her lying on the shingle dreaming with her head upon her arm .