three o'clock
It was now the third of July , and valley and river were beautiful in the golden sunlight . The foliage showed vivid and deep green on either line of high hills . The summer sun had never shown more kindly over the lovely valley . The time was now three o'clock . The gates of the fort were thrown open , and the little army marched out , only three hundred , of whom seventy were old men , or boys so young that in our day they would be called children . Yet they marched bravely against the picked warriors of the Iroquois , trained from infancy to the forest and war , and a formidable body of white rovers who wished to destroy the little colony of `` rebels , '' as they called them . Small though it might be , it was a gallant army .