three o'clock in the morning
There were murmurs . Then a private resident of an adjoining place informed the local policeman that the baker 's boy should not be allowed to read while driving , and insisted that it was the constable 's duty to catch him in the act , and take him to the police court at Alfredston , and get him fined for dangerous practices on the highway . The policeman thereupon lay in wait for Jude , and one day accosted him and cautioned him . As Jude had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to heat the oven , and mix and set in the bread that he distributed later in the day , he was obliged to go to bed at night immediately after laying the sponge ; so that if he could not read his classics on the highways he could hardly study at all . The only thing to be done was , therefore , to keep a sharp eye ahead and around him as well as he could in the circumstances , and slip away his books as soon as anybody loomed in the distance , the policeman in particular . To do that official justice , he did not put himself much in the way of Jude 's bread-cart , considering that in such a lonely district the chief danger was to Jude himself , and often on seeing the white tilt over the hedges he would move in another direction . On a day when Fawley was getting quite advanced , being now about sixteen , and had been stumbling through the `` Carmen Sæculare , '' on his way home , he found himself to be passing over the high edge of the plateau by the Brown House .