five o'clock
The placards and the caricature were prepared before the departure of the delegates ; and it had been settled that Mat Paine , Dempster 's clerk , should ride out on Thursday morning to meet them at Whitlow , the last place where they would change horses , that he might gallop back and prepare an ovation for the triumvirate in case of their success . Dempster had determined to dine at Whitlow : so that Mat Paine was in Milby again two hours before the entrance of the delegates , and had time to send a whisper up the back streets that there was promise of a ` spree ' in the Bridge Way , as well as to assemble two knots of picked men -- one to feed the flame of orthodox zeal with gin-and-water , at the Green Man , near High Street ; the other to solidify their church principles with heady beer at the Bear and Ragged Staff in the Bridge Way . The Bridge Way was an irregular straggling street , where the town fringed off raggedly into the Whitlow road : rows of new red-brick houses , in which ribbon-looms were rattling behind long lines of window , alternating with old , half-thatched , half-tiled cottages -- one of those dismal wide streets where dirt and misery have no long shadows thrown on them to soften their ugliness . Here , about half-past five o'clock , Silly Caleb , an idiot well known in Dog Lane , but more of a stranger in the Bridge Way , was seen slouching along with a string of boys hooting at his heels ; presently another group , for the most part out at elbows , came briskly in the same direction , looking round them with an air of expectation ; and at no long interval , Deb Traunter , in a pink flounced gown and floating ribbons , was observed talking with great affability to two men in seal-skin caps and fustian , who formed her cortege . The Bridge Way began to have a presentiment of something in the wind . Phib Cook left her evening wash-tub and appeared at her door in soap-suds , a bonnet-poke , and general dampness ; three narrow-chested ribbon-weavers , in rusty black streaked with shreds of many-coloured silk , sauntered out with their hands in their pockets ; and Molly Beale , a brawny old virago , descrying wiry Dame Ricketts peeping out from her entry , seized the opportunity of renewing the morning 's skirmish . In short , the Bridge Way was in that state of excitement which is understood to announce a ` demonstration ' on the part of the British public ; and the afflux of remote townsmen increasing , there was soon so large a crowd that it was time for Bill Powers , a plethoric Goliath , who presided over the knot of beer-drinkers at the Bear and Ragged Staff , to issue forth with his companions , and , like the enunciator of the ancient myth , make the assemblage distinctly conscious of the common sentiment that had drawn them together .