twelve o'clock
It was , however , not the choir 's labours , but what its members chanced to witness , that particularly marked the occasion . They had pursued their rounds for many years without meeting with any incident of an unusual kind , but to-night , according to the assertions of several , there prevailed , to begin with , an exceptionally solemn and thoughtful mood among two or three of the oldest in the band , as if they were thinking they might be joined by the phantoms of dead friends who had been of their number in earlier years , and now were mute in the churchyard under flattening mounds -- friends who had shown greater zest for melody in their time than was shown in this ; or that some past voice of a semi-transparent figure might quaver from some bedroom-window its acknowledgment of their nocturnal greeting , instead of a familiar living neighbour . Whether this were fact or fancy , the younger members of the choir met together with their customary thoughtlessness and buoyancy . When they had gathered by the stone stump of the cross in the middle of the village , near the White Horse Inn , which they made their starting point , some one observed that they were full early , that it was not yet twelve o'clock . The local waits of those days mostly refrained from sounding a note before Christmas morning had astronomically arrived , and not caring to return to their beer , they decided to begin with some outlying cottages in Sidlinch Lane , where the people had no clocks , and would not know whether it were night or morning . In that direction they accordingly went ; and as they ascended to higher ground their attention was attracted by a light beyond the houses , quite at the top of the lane . The road from Chalk-Newton to Broad Sidlinch is about two miles long and in the middle of its course , where it passes over the ridge dividing the two villages , it crosses at right angles , as has been stated , the lonely monotonous old highway known as Long Ash Lane , which runs , straight as a surveyor 's line , many miles north and south of this spot , on the foundation of a Roman road , and has often been mentioned in these narratives .