midnight
They felt , no doubt , the growing impatience of all their other visitors pressing forward with the reminder that if the Sturtons ' cab did not come at once , there would be no more dancing . Half-way up the stairs little Nora Bailey 's high laughing voice was embroidering her statement with regard to the extra stroke of the stable-clock . `` I had a kind of premonition that it was going to , as soon as it began , '' she was saying . Gordon Hughes was telling the old story of the sentry who had saved his life by a similar counting of the strokes of midnight . And at the back of my mind my dæmon was still thrusting out little spurts of enthralling allegory . The Sturtons and Jervaises had been driven in from the open . They were taking refuge in their house .