midnight
The soldiers were again called out , again they took half-a-dozen prisoners , and again the crowd dispersed after a short and bloodless scuffle . Hot and drunken though they were , they had not yet broken all bounds and set all law and government at defiance . Something of their habitual deference to the authority erected by society for its own preservation yet remained among them , and had its majesty been vindicated in time , the secretary would have had to digest a bitter disappointment . By midnight , the streets were clear and quiet , and , save that there stood in two parts of the town a heap of nodding walls and pile of rubbish , where there had been at sunset a rich and handsome building , everything wore its usual aspect . Even the Catholic gentry and tradesmen , of whom there were many resident in different parts of the City and its suburbs , had no fear for their lives or property , and but little indignation for the wrong they had already sustained in the plunder and destruction of their temples of worship . An honest confidence in the government under whose protection they had lived for many years , and a well-founded reliance on the good feeling and right thinking of the great mass of the community , with whom , notwithstanding their religious differences , they were every day in habits of confidential , affectionate , and friendly intercourse , reassured them , even under the excesses that had been committed ; and convinced them that they who were Protestants in anything but the name , were no more to be considered as abettors of these disgraceful occurrences , than they themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block , the rack , the gibbet , and the stake in cruel Mary 's reign . The clock was on the stroke of one , when Gabriel Varden , with his lady and Miss Miggs , sat waiting in the little parlour .