nine o'clock
`` Now will you be kind enough to tell me where I am ? '' `` You are inside the lines of our army , about three miles below Centreville , '' replied one of the pickets . `` What time is it ? '' `` Nigh upon nine o'clock , I should say . One of you fellers must take this prisoner to headquarters , '' he continued , speaking to his companions . Tom was very agreeably surprised to find that his captors did not propose to hang , shoot , or bayonet him ; and the Southern Confederacy rose a few degrees in his estimation . Certainly the men who had taken him were not fiends , and he began to hope that his situation as a prisoner would not be so terrible as his fancy had pictured it .