two o'clock in the afternoon
He swung it round his head once , broke an outhouse window with a flying fragment of glass , and ruined the stocking beyond all darning . He developed a subtle scheme with the cellar flap as a sort of pitfall , but he rejected it finally because -LRB- A -RRB- it might entrap the plump woman , and -LRB- B -RRB- he had no use whatever for Uncle Jim in the cellar . He determined to wire the garden that evening , burglar fashion , against the possibilities of a night attack . Towards two o'clock in the afternoon three young men arrived in a capacious boat from the direction of Lammam , and asked permission to camp in the paddock . It was given all the more readily by Mr. Polly because he perceived in their proximity a possible check upon the self-expression of Uncle Jim . But he did not foresee and no one could have foreseen that Uncle Jim , stealing unawares upon the Potwell Inn in the late afternoon , armed with a large rough-hewn stake , should have mistaken the bending form of one of those campers -- who was pulling a few onions by permission in the garden -- for Mr. Polly 's , and crept upon it swiftly and silently and smitten its wide invitation unforgettably and unforgiveably . It was an error impossible to explain ; the resounding whack went up to heaven , the cry of amazement , and Mr. Polly emerged from the inn armed with the frying-pan he was cleaning , to take this reckless assailant in the rear .