midday
Many of the shops were shut . Grave citizens , engaged in pressing affairs , hurried , with downcast eyes , along the causeways , seldom stopping to speak to each other , greeting acquaintances with hasty nods . Women of the better sort , if they ventured out at all , walked quickly , heavily cloaked and veiled . The trollops and street walkers of a garrison town emerged from their lairs even at midday , and stood in little groups at the corners exchanging jests with the soldiers on picket duty , or shouted ribaldries to the yeomen and dragoons who passed them . Idle maid servants , sluttish and dishevelled , leaned far out of the upper windows of the houses to gaze at the pageant beneath them . In the High Street a crowd of loafers -- coarse women and soldiers off duty -- was gathered in front of an iron triangle where , it was understood , some prisoners were to be flogged . Town , Major Fox , Major Barber , and some other officers in uniform , strolled up and down in front of the Exchange , rudely jostling such merchants as ventured to enter or leave the building .