five o'clock
Then all rode away , dashing past the minute-men on Lexington Green . `` The minute-men are forming , -- three hundred of them , '' reported the officers to Colonel Smith , who was marching up the road . -LSB- 58 -RSB- -LSB- Footnote 58 : `` We heard there were some hundreds of people collected there , intending to oppose us and stop our going out . At five o'clock we arrived there , and a number of people , I believe between two and three hundred , formed on a common in the middle of the town . '' `` Diary of a British Officer , '' _ Atlantic Monthly _ , April , 1877 . -RSB- The bell and the drumbeat , the lights in Buckman 's tavern and the other houses , the minute-men in line by the meetinghouse , had quickened the imagination of the excited Britishers . `` The country is alarmed .