About ten o'clock
Owen and Easton brought the remainder on a truck they borrowed for the purpose from Hunter . During the last weeks of February the severity of the weather increased . There was a heavy fall of snow on the 20th followed by a hard frost which lasted several days . About ten o'clock one night a policeman found a man lying unconscious in the middle of a lonely road . At first he thought the man was drunk , and after dragging him on to the footpath out of the way of passing vehicles he went for the stretcher . They took the man to the station and put him into a cell , which was already occupied by a man who had been caught in the act of stealing a swede turnip from a barn . When the police surgeon came he pronounced the supposed drunken man to be dying from bronchitis and want of food ; and he further said that there was nothing to indicate that the man was addicted to drink .