seven
o'clock
He was a very pleasant-spoken gentleman , the flyman added , and paid uncommon liberal . `` I dare say he did , '' muttered Mr. Carter . He gave the man a shilling for his information , and went back to the fly that had brought him to the station . It was getting on for seven o'clock by this time , and Joseph Wilmot had had eight-and-forty hours ' start of him . The detective was quite down-hearted now . He went up to London by the same train which he had every reason to suppose had carried Joseph Wilmot and his daughter two nights before , and at the Euston terminus he worked very hard on that night and on the following day to trace the missing man . But Joseph Wilmot was only a drop in the great ocean of London life .