about an hour after noon
For doors were not locked in Stockbridge in those days . Peleg 's information , although of a hearsay character , was correct . Perez Hamlin was coming home . The day following the conversation in the barroom of Stockbridge tavern , which I have briefly sketched in the last chapter , about an hour after noon , a horseman might have been seen approaching the village of Great Barrington , on the road from Sheffield . He wore the buff and blue uniform of a captain in the late Continental army , and strapped to the saddle was a steel hilted sword which had apparently experienced a good many hard knocks . The lack of any other baggage to speak of , as well as the frayed and stained condition of his uniform , indicated that however rich the rider might be in glory , he was tolerably destitute of more palpable forms of wealth . Poverty , in fact , had been the chief reason that had prevented Captain Hamlin from returning home before .