midnight
The streamers dig this mud up and wash it through sieves , and so they get the tin . There was enough of it , my father said , in Luxulyan Couse to keep a captain and twelve men in good wages and pay for a feast once a year at the Rising Sun Public House . The supper took place some time in the week before Christmas , and they called it Pie-crust Night , though I ca n't tell you why . Well , one Pie-crust Night , after this yearly supper -- the most enjoyable he had ever known -- my father left the Rising Sun towards midnight , and started to walk to his home in Luxulyan Churchtown . He had a fair dollop of beer inside of him , but nothing -LRB- as he ever maintained -RRB- , to excuse what followed , and he got so far as Tregarden Down without accident . Now , this Tregarden Down , as he always described it to me , is a lonesome place given over to brackenfern and strewn about with great granite boulders , and on one of these boulders my father sat down , because the night was clear and a fancy had come into his head to count the stars . He sat there staring up and counting till he reached twenty score , and with that he felt he was getting a crick in the back of his neck , and brought his eyes down to earth again .