two o'clock
It was a fortunate thing , perhaps , for humanity , but for him it was a fatal inaction . During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy . In the morning he had still been simply a legend , a terror ; in the afternoon , by virtue chiefly of Kemp 's drily worded proclamation , he was presented as a tangible antagonist , to be wounded , captured , or overcome , and the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity . By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a train , but after two that became impossible . Every passenger train along the lines on a great parallelogram between Southampton , Manchester , Brighton and Horsham , travelled with locked doors , and the goods traffic was almost entirely suspended . And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port Burdock , men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting out in groups of three and four , with dogs , to beat the roads and fields . Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes , stopping at every cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses , and keep indoors unless they were armed , and all the elementary schools had broken up by three o'clock , and the children , scared and keeping together in groups , were hurrying home .