noon
But as Bas lay there , for once prepared to act as executioner in person instead of through a hireling , Kenneth Thornton and Will Turk were nearing the state border , having travelled furtively and unseen by a `` trace '' that had put the bulk of a mountain between them and ambuscade . The winter settled after that with a beleaguering of steeps and broken levels under a blockade of stark hardship . Peaks stood naked save for their evergreens , alternately wrapped in snow and viscid with mud . Morning disclosed the highways `` all spewed up with frost '' and noon found them impassably mired . Night brought from the forests the sharp frost-cracking of the beeches like the pop of small guns , and in wayside stores the backwoods merchants leaned over their counters and shook dismal heads , when housewives plodded in over long and slavish trails to buy salt and lard , and went home again with their sacks empty . Those who did not `` have things hung up '' felt the pinch of actual suffering , and faces in ill-lighted and more illy ventilated cabins became morose and pessimistic . Such human soil was fallow for the agitator , and the doctrine which the winter did not halt from travelling was that incitement preached by the `` riders . ''