four o'clock
You might confiscate it as an `` incitement to desertion , '' you know . The girl 's pretty , and ought to be growing up now . '' But haply at this point the sergeant stopped further raillery by reporting the detachment ready ; and drawing his sword , Calvert , with a confused head , a remorseful heart , but an unfaltering step , marched off his men on his delicate mission . It was four o'clock when he entered Jonesville . Following a matter-of-fact idea of his own , he had brought his men the greater distance by a circuitous route through the woods , thus avoiding the ostentatious exposure of his party on the open bay in a well-manned boat to an extended view from the three leagues of shore and marsh opposite . Crossing the stream , which here separated him from the Dedlow Marsh by the common ferry , he had thus been enabled to halt unperceived below the settlement and occupy the two roads by which the fugitives could escape inland . He had deemed it not impossible that , after the previous visit of the sergeant , the deserters hidden in the vicinity might return to Jonesville in the belief that the visit would not be repeated so soon .