eight o’clock
One can imagine them , covered with sand , excited and disordered , running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows . Henderson went into the railway station at once , in order to telegraph the news to London . The newspaper articles had prepared men 's minds for the reception of the idea . By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the `` dead men from Mars . '' That was the form the story took . I heard of it first from my newspaper boy about a quarter to nine when I went out to get my _ Daily Chronicle _ . I was naturally startled , and lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits .