five o'clock
The library window at headquarters was bright : Colonel Cummings and a surgeon were respectively commanding and persuading young Jamieson to await his mother and sister at the post . Nick Matthews , attended by a watchful sergeant , was having his hair cut by the citizen barber . While Lounsbury , too joyfully excited to sleep , was in the sutler 's billiard-room , giving Fraser , who was about to depart with the expedition , a sympathetic history of the Lancasters -- a history in which Marylyn was shrewdly made the dainty central figure . At five o'clock , everything being in readiness , a livelier activity prevailed . The out-going troop was routed from bed and fortified with a hot breakfast . By six , `` boots and saddles '' had sounded . And , soon , the detachment -- protected from the cold by blanket-coats , and with black cutties burning down the whole length of its double line -- was leading the wagon-train at a good jog toward the west .