midnight
`` Wheel the trunk to the station myself , of course , '' Simeon replied . `` If we meet the porter on the way , so much the better for us ... and so much the worse for him ! '' he added . It was just as dark as though it had been midnight -- dark and excessively cold ; not a ray of hope in the sky ; not a sign of life in the street . All Bursley , and , indeed , all the Five Towns , were sleeping off the various consequences of Christmas on the human frame . Trafalgar Road , with its double row of lamps , each exactly like that one in front of the house of the Cotterills , stretched downwards into the dead heart of Bursley , and upwards over the brow of the hill into space . And although Arthur Cotterill knew Trafalgar Road as well as Mrs Hopkins knew the hundred and twenty-first Psalm , the effect of the scene on him was most uncanny .