noon
The rocks for the ambush were waist high , and the twigs that had been thrust in the crevices between them were withered . And there , on the hypothesis that the Red Fox was the assassin , Hale tried to put himself , after the deed , into the Red Fox 's shoes . The old man had turned up on guard before noon -- then he must have gone somewhere first or have killed considerable time in the woods . He would not have crossed the road , for there were two houses on the other side ; there would have been no object in going on over the mountain unless he meant to escape , and if he had gone over there for another reason he would hardly have had time to get to the Court House before noon : nor would he have gone back along the road on that side , for on that side , too , was a cabin not far away . So Hale turned and walked straight away from the road where the walking was easiest -- down a ravine , and pushing this way and that through the bushes where the way looked easiest . Half a mile down the ravine he came to a little brook , and there in the black earth was the faint print of a man 's left foot and in the hard crust across was the deeper print of his right , where his weight in leaping had come down hard . But the prints were made by a shoe and not by a moccasin , and then Hale recalled exultantly that the Red Fox did not have his moccasins on the morning he turned up on guard .