eight o'clock
And spoke of the old General derisively , even injuriously , to their own lasting disgrace . Towards dawn , when I lay down on the floor of a barn to sleep , the uproar had died out in a measure ; but lights still flickered in the camp where soldiers were smoking their pipes and playing cards by the flare of splinter-wood torches . As for the pickets , they paid not the slightest attention to their duties , continually leaving their posts to hobnob with neighbors ; and the indiscipline alarmed me , for what could one expect to find in men who roamed about where it pleased them , howling their dissatisfaction with their commander , and addressing their officers by their first names ? At eight o'clock on that oppressive August morning , while writing a letter to my cousin Dorothy , which an Oneida had promised to deliver , he being about to start with a message to Governor Clinton , I was interrupted by Jack Mount , who came into the barn , saying that a company of officers were quarrelling in front of the sugar-shack occupied as headquarters . I folded my letter , sealed it with a bit of blue balsam gum , and bade Mount deliver it to the Oneida runner , while I stepped up the road . Of all unseemly sights that I have ever had the misfortune to witness , what I now saw was the most shameful . I pushed and shouldered my way through a riotous mob of soldiers and teamsters which choked the highway ; loud , angry voices raised in reproach or dispute assailed my ears .