nine o'clock at night
As to the coach , it was a mere snowball ; similarly , the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town 's end , turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses , were men and boys of snow ; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara . One would have thought this enough : notwithstanding which , I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed , and still it snowed , and never left off snowing . We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day ; seeing nothing , out of towns and villages , but the track of stoats , hares , and foxes , and sometimes of birds . At nine o'clock at night , on a Yorkshire moor , a cheerful burst from our horn , and a welcome sound of talking , with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns , roused me from my drowsy state . I found that we were going to change . They helped me out , and I said to a waiter , whose bare head became as white as King Lear 's in a single minute , `` What Inn is this ? '' `` The Holly-Tree , sir , '' said he .