Butler paced to and fro through his narrow chamber for some minutes, as his mind revolved the extraordinary and unexpected disclosures which had been made to him in this short visit. A thousand conjectures rose into his thoughts as to the nature of the supposed charges that were to be brought against him. He minutely retraced all the incidents of his late adventures, to ascertain how it was possible to found upon them an accusation of violated faith, or to pervert them into an imputation of treason against the present doubtful and disputed authority of the self-styled conquerors of Carolina. If his attempt to join Clarke was treason, it could be no less treason in the followers of Gates to array themselves against the royal army; and, that every prisoner hereafter taken in battle was to be deemed a traitor to the contested power of Cornwallis, seemed to be a pretension too absurd for the most inveterate partisans to assert. There was nothing in this review of his actions that the most ingenious malice could pervert into an offence punishable by the laws of war, by other rigor than such as might be inflicted upon an ordinary prisoner taken in arms. Still, there were unhappy doubts of some secret treachery that rose to his reflections: the perfidy of Adair, manifestly the effect of a bribe; the ambuscade promoted and managed by James Curry; the bloody purpose of the brutal gang who captured him, frustrated only by the accidental fray in which Blake was wounded. Then the "doubtful givings out" which fell from the lips of some of the soldiers at Blackstock's, of his case still being one of life and death; the insinuation of the savage Habershaw, at the same place, conveyed in the threat of twisted hemp; the knowledge which his present keepers affected to have of his rank and consequence, of his past life and present aims; and, above all, his being brought for immediate trial, in a matter affecting his life, before the very man, now in the capacity of a military commander, who had heretofore been active in promoting the design of confiscating his estate. All these considerations, although unconnected with any circumstance of specific offence within his knowledge, led him into the most anxious and melancholy forebodings as to the result of this day's proceedings. "I am doomed to fall," he said, "under some secret stroke of vengeance, and my country is to have in my case another stirring appeal against the enormity of that iron rule that seeks to bow her head into the dust. So be it! The issue is in the hand of God, and my fate may turn to the account of the establishment of a nation's liberty. Oh, Mildred, I tremble to think of thee! Heaven grant, my girl, that thy fortitude may triumph over the martyrdom of him that loves thee better than his life!" CHAPTER XXV. A TRIAL.--A GRAVE ACCUSATION THAT STILL FURTHER CONFIRMS BUTLER IN HIS BELIEF OF A SECRET ENEMY.--A SUDDEN RESPITE.