nine o'clock
`` Quick march ! '' said the sergeant . The soldiers stepped out again ; and as we turned the angle of the road , about a mile farther , I beheld Kelly still standing in the self same attitude we left him . Barton , after some order to the sergeant , soon left us , and we continued our march till near nine o'clock , when the party halted to breakfast . They pressed me to eat with every kind entreaty , but I could taste nothing , and we resumed our road after half an hour . But the day becoming oppressively hot , it was deemed better to defer our march till near sunset ; we stopped , then , during the noon , in a shady thicket near the roadside , where the men , unbuckling their knapsacks and loosening their stocks , lay down in the deep grass , either chatting together or smoking . The sergeant made many attempts to draw me into conversation , but my heart was too full of its own sensations either to speak or listen ; so he abandoned the pursuit with a good grace , and betook himself to his pipe at the foot of a tree , where , after its last whiff escaped , he sank into a heavy sleep .