about three o'clock in
the afternoon
The parlor beyond was even more expensively furnished and decorated . Flat on his back , in the middle of the parlor carpet , was stretched Meshech Little , dead drunk . In nearly every chair was a barefooted , coatless lout , drunk and snoring with his hat over his eyes , and his legs stretched out , or vacantly staring with open mouth at Desire , who , with a face like ashes and the air of an automaton , was playing the piano . On the day following , which was Saturday , at about three o'clock in the afternoon , Perez Hamlin was at work in the yard behind the house , shoeing his horse in preparation for the start west the next week . Horse shoeing was an accomplishment he had acquired in the army , and he had no shillings to waste in hiring others to do anything he could do himself . As he let the last hoof out from between his knees , and stood up , he saw Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps coming across the yard toward him . Ezra wore his working suit , sprinkled with the meal dust of his gristmill , and Israel had on a long blue-woolen farmer 's smock , reaching to his knees , and carried in his hand a hickory-handled whip with a long lash , indicating that he had come in his cart , which he had presumably left hitched to the rail fence in front of the house .