midnight
We will say , therefore , that that night there was a cry of alarm passing all through the succession of country towns and rural communities that lay around Boston , and dying away towards the coast and the wilder forest borders . Horsemen galloped past the line of farm-houses shouting alarm ! alarm ! There were stories of marching troops coming like dreams through the midnight . Around the little rude meeting-houses there was here and there the beat of a drum , and the assemblage of farmers with their weapons . So all that night there was marching , there was mustering , there was trouble ; and , on the road from Boston , a steady march of soldiers ' feet onward , onward into the land whose last warlike disturbance had been when the red Indians trod it . Septimius heard it , and knew , like the rest , that it was the sound of coming war .