seven in the morning
* * * * * Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller . But , if I had told it now , I could have added that the time has since come when the son of Major Richard Doubledick , and the son of that French officer , friends as their fathers were before them , fought side by side in one cause , with their respective nations , like long-divided brothers whom the better times have brought together , fast united . My story being finished , and the Wassail too , we broke up as the Cathedral bell struck Twelve . I did not take leave of my travellers that night ; for it had come into my head to reappear , in conjunction with some hot coffee , at seven in the morning . As I passed along the High Street , I heard the Waits at a distance , and struck off to find them . They were playing near one of the old gates of the City , at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements , which the clarionet obligingly informed me were inhabited by the Minor-Canons . They had odd little porches over the doors , like sounding-boards over old pulpits ; and I thought I should like to see one of the Minor-Canons come out upon his top stop , and favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester ; taking for his text the words of his Master relative to the devouring of Widows ' houses .