nearly seven o'clock
Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut , whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock , knowing well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes . Moreover , as will be seen in the course of my story , the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler , always itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again . After an early breakfast at Morristown the tobacco-pedler -- whose name was Dominicus Pike -- had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare . It being nearly seven o'clock , he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper . An opportunity seemed at hand when , after lighting a cigar with a sun-glass , he looked up and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill at the foot of which the pedler had stopped his green cart . Dominicus watched him as he descended , and noticed that he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick and travelled with a weary yet determined pace . He did not look as if he had started in the freshness of the morning , but had footed it all night , and meant to do the same all day .