three o'clock
The gloomy weather of the last three or four days had passed off in heavy battalions of sullen sunset clouds on the preceding evening , and the air was full of frost . By midnight thin ice was lying everywhere ; pendants of it were beginning to form on the overhanging eaves ; and streaks of it between the cobble-stones that paved the court . The great city lay in a frosty stillness as of death . The patrol passed along Cheapside forty yards away from the entrance of the court , a little after three o'clock ; and a watchman had cried out half an hour later , that it was a clear night ; and then he too had gone his way . The court itself was a little rectangular enclosure with two entrances , one to the north beneath the arch of a stable that gave on to Newman 's Passage , which in its turn opened on to St. Giles ' Lane that led to Cheapside ; the other , at the further end of the long right-hand side , led by a labyrinth of passages down in the direction of the wharfs to the west of London Bridge . There were three houses to the left of the entrance from Newman 's Passage ; the back of a ware-house faced them on the other long side with the door beyond ; and the other two sides were respectively formed by the archway of the stable with a loft over it , and a blank high wall at the opposite end . A few minutes after four o'clock the figure of a woman suddenly appeared soundlessly in the arch under the stables ; and after standing there a moment advanced along the front of the houses till she reached the third door .