noon
Now he was barged as a Luthanian peasant . He was hatless , since the lady had failed to hang out her mate 's woolen cap , and Barney had not dared retain a single vestige of the damning Austrian uniform . What the peasant woman thought when she discovered the empty line the following morning Barney could only guess , but he was morally certain that her grief was more than tempered by the gold piece he had wrapped in a bit of cloth torn from the soldier 's coat he had worn , which he pinned on the line where the shirt and pants had been . It was somewhere near noon upon the seventh day that Barney skirting a little stream , followed through the concealing shade of a forest toward the west . In his peasant dress he now felt safer to approach a farmhouse and inquire his way to Tann , for he had come a sufficient distance from the spot where he had stolen his new clothes to hope that they would not be recognized or that the news of their theft had not preceded him . As he walked he heard the sound of the feet of a horse galloping over a dry field -- muffled , rapid thud approaching closer upon his right hand . Barney remained motionless .