two o'clock
He scarcely even heard the talk round him , although it was loud and continuous ; and what he heard meant little to him . He understood only that there had been strange scenes , that London was said to have gone suddenly mad , that Felsenburgh had spoken that night in Paul 's House . He was afraid at the way in which he had been treated , and he asked himself dully again and again what it was that had inspired that treatment ; it seemed that he had been in the presence of the supernatural ; he was conscious of shivering a little , and of the symptoms of an intolerable sleepiness . It was scarcely strange to him that he should be sitting in a crowded car at two o'clock of a summer dawn . Thrice the car stopped , and he stared out at the signs of confusion that were everywhere ; at the figures that ran in the twilight between the tracks , at a couple of wrecked carriages , a tumble of tarpaulins ; he listened mechanically to the hoots and cries that sounded everywhere . As he stepped out at last on to the platform , he found it very much as he had left it two hours before . There was the same desperate rush as the car discharged its load , the same dead body beneath the seat ; and above all , as he ran helplessly behind the crowd , scarcely knowing whither he ran or why , above him burned the same stupendous message beneath the clock .