seven o’clock
`` Where he 'll find money for his white gloves and things now , is beyond my telling , the darling boy ! If I could but get to that Lord Chancellor ! '' Had you possessed the privilege of living in Helstonleigh at the time of which this story treats -- and I can assure you you might live in a less privileged city -- it is possible that , on the morning following the above events , your peaceful slumbers might have been rudely broken by a noise , loud enough to waken the seven sleepers of Ephesus . Before seven o'clock , the whole school , choristers and king 's scholars , assembled in the cloisters . But , instead of entering the schoolroom for early school , they formed themselves into a dense mass -LRB- if you ever saw schoolboys march otherwise , I have not -RRB- , and , treading on each other 's heels , proceeded through the town to the lodgings of the judges , in pursuance of a time-honoured custom . There the head-boy sent in his name to the very chamber of the Lord Chief Justice , who happened this time to have come to the Helstonleigh circuit . `` Mr. Gaunt , senior of the college school '' -- craving holiday for himself , and the whole fry who had attended him .