six o'clock
`` My love to Margaret . Look out for the sergeant . Good-bye ! '' Two days afterwards , towards six o'clock on a bitter evening , I rode wearily into Leek . I was having a hard apprenticeship in soldiering under a master who had no idea of sparing either me or himself . For the Colonel had accepted the post of second , under Murray , in command of our rear-guard , and had made it a condition of acceptance that I should be with him . Some thirty Highlanders , mostly Macdonalds , picked dare-devils , had been mounted and turned into dragooners , and I , thanks to the Colonel , had been made Captain over them .