nine o'clock
John Menzies Grant , having breakfasted , filled his pipe , lit it , and strolled out bare-headed into the garden . The month was June , that glorious rose-month which gladdened England before war-clouds darkened the summer sky . As the hour was nine o'clock , it is highly probable that many thousands of men were then strolling out into many thousands of gardens in precisely similar conditions ; but , given youth , good health , leisure , and a fair amount of money , it is even more probable that few among the smaller number thus roundly favored by fortune looked so perplexed as Grant . Moreover , his actions were eloquent as words . A spacious French window had been cut bodily out of the wall of an old-fashioned room , and was now thrown wide to admit the flower-scented breeze . Between this window and the right-hand angle of the room was a smaller window , square-paned , high above the ground level , and deeply recessed -- in fact just the sort of window which one might expect to find in a farm-house built two centuries ago , when light and air were rigorously excluded from interiors .