eight o'clock
Once only -- though the kneeling cost him torture , and the sweat came no less from anguish than from exertion -- did he pause and straighten himself up to listen . Upstairs the Penhaligon children had awakened with the daylight and were talking -- chirruping like sparrows -- before they left their beds -- Hey ! now the day dawis ; The joly cock crawis ... -- but Nicky-Nan toiled on in his dim parlour , collecting wealth . By eight o'clock he had picked up and arranged -- still in neat piles of twenty -- some eight hundred coins of golden money . His belly was fasting : but he had forgotten the crust in the cupboard . Had he not here enough to defray a king 's banquet ? Some one tapped on the door .