midnight
The coach stopped and went on , and went on and stopped , times out of number . Passengers got up and passengers got down , and fresh horses came and went and came again , with scarcely any interval between each team as it seemed to those who were dozing , and with a gap of a whole night between every one as it seemed to those who were broad awake . At length they began to jolt and rumble over horribly uneven stones , and Mr Pecksniff looking out of window said it was to-morrow morning , and they were there . Very soon afterwards the coach stopped at the office in the city ; and the street in which it was situated was already in a bustle , that fully bore out Mr Pecksniff 's words about its being morning , though for any signs of day yet appearing in the sky it might have been midnight . There was a dense fog too ; as if it were a city in the clouds , which they had been travelling to all night up a magic beanstalk ; and there was a thick crust upon the pavement like oilcake ; which , one of the outsides -LRB- mad , no doubt -RRB- said to another -LRB- his keeper , of course -RRB- , was Snow . Taking a confused leave of Anthony and his son , and leaving the luggage of himself and daughters at the office to be called for afterwards , Mr Pecksniff , with one of the young ladies under each arm , dived across the street , and then across other streets , and so up the queerest courts , and down the strangest alleys and under the blindest archways , in a kind of frenzy ; now skipping over a kennel , now running for his life from a coach and horses ; now thinking he had lost his way , now thinking he had found it ; now in a state of the highest confidence , now despondent to the last degree , but always in a great perspiration and flurry ; until at length they stopped in a kind of paved yard near the Monument . That is to say , Mr Pecksniff told them so ; for as to anything they could see of the Monument , or anything else but the buildings close at hand , they might as well have been playing blindman 's buff at Salisbury .