two o'clock
_ Guns in the Night _ There were sounds enough in the middle of the night to tell the initiated that a troop was on the march -- creak of saddle leather , click of shod hoof , now and then the smothered exclamation of a man shaken out of a cavalryman 's mounted doze . To Drew 's trained ears all this was loud enough to send any Union picket calling out the guard . Yet there was no indication that the enemy ahead was alert . Near two o'clock he made it , and the advance were walking their horses into the fringe of Lexington -- this was home-coming for a good many of the men sagging in the saddles . Morgan 's old magic was working again . Escaping from the Ohio prison , he had managed to gather up the remnants of a badly shattered command , weld them together , and lead them up from Georgia to their old fighting fields -- the country which they considered rightfully theirs and in which during other years they had piled one humiliating defeat for the blue coats on another . General Morgan could _ not _ lose in Kentucky !