ten o'clock
But this discovery had no sooner raised me to a claim on his regard than I found his cordiality chilled by the thought that I believed in the Pope or -LRB- as he preferred to put it -RRB- Antichrist . My eminence as a genuine McNeill made the shadow of my error the taller . In these two days of inactivity I felt his solicitude growing until , next to the immediate movements of Marmont , my conversion became for him the most important question in the Peninsula , and I saw that , unless I allowed him at least to attempt it , another forty-eight hours would wear him to fiddle-strings . Thus it happened that mid-day of the 30th found us on the wooded hill above the cross-roads ; found me stretched at full length on my back and smoking , and the Captain -LRB- who did not smoke -RRB- seated beside me with his pocket Testament , earnestly sapping the fundamental errors of Rome , when José , who had been absent all the morning reconnoitring , brought news that Marmont 's van -LRB- which he had been watching , and ahead of which he had been dodging since ten o'clock -RRB- was barely two miles away . The Captain pulled out his watch , allowed them thirty-five minutes , and quietly proceeded with his exposition . As the head of the leading column swung into sight around the base of the foot-hills , he sought in his haversack and drew out a small volume -- the _ Pilgrim 's Progress _ -- and having dog 's - eared a page of it inscribed my name on the fly-leaf , `` from his kinsman , Alan McNeill . '' `` It is a question , '' said he , as I thanked him , `` and one often debated , if it be not better that a whole army , such as we see approaching , should perish bodily in every circumstance of horror than that one soul , such as yours or mine , should fail to find the true light .