"Push your nag along, old man.

Tony and Hastings will be waiting for us." It was very difficult to see clearly even a metre or two ahead, but the road was a straight one, and the old nag seemed to know it almost as well and better than her driver.

She shambled along at her own pace, covering the ground very slowly for Ffoulkes's burning impatience.

Once or twice he had to get down and lead her over a rough piece of ground.
They passed several groups of dismal, squalid houses, in some of which a dim light still burned, and as they skirted St.Ouen the church clock slowly tolled the hour of midnight.
But for the greater part of the way derelict, uncultivated spaces of terrains vagues, and a few isolated houses lay between the road and the fortifications of the city.

The darkness of the night, the late hour, the soughing of the wind, were all in favour of the adventurers; and a coal-cart slowly trudging along in this neighbourhood, with two labourers sitting in it, was the least likely of any vehicle to attract attention.
Past Clichy, they had to cross the river by the rickety wooden bridge that was unsafe even in broad daylight.