"I shall take no message to 'Mr.' Washington," Jack answered. "If I did, I am sure that he would not receive it." Mr. Pinhorn's face expressed a high degree of astonishment. "Pride! Error! Persistent error!" he exclaimed. "Never mind! Details can be fixed. You are to go to-night. Return to-morrow!" The prospect of getting away from his misery even for a day or two was alluring. "Let me have the details in writing and I will let you know at once," he answered. The plan was soon delivered. Jack was to pass the lines on the northeast front in the vicinity of Breed's Hill with a British sergeant, under a white flag, and proceed to Washington's headquarters. "Looks kind o' neevarious," said Solomon when they were out in the jail yard together. "Looks like ye might be grabbed in the jaws o' a trap. Nobody's name is signed to this 'ere paper. There's nothin' behind the hull thing but ol' Pinhorn an'--who? I'm skeered o' Mr. Who? Pinhorn an' Who an' a Dark Night! There's a pardnership! Kind o' well mated! They want ye to put yer life in their hands. What fer? Wal, ye know it 'pears to me they'd be apt to be car'less with it. It's jest possible that there's some feller who'll be happier if you was rubbed off the slate. War is goin' on an' you belong to that breed o' pups they call rebels. A dead rebel don't cause no hard feelin's in the British army. Now, Jack, you stay where ye be. 'Tain't a fust rate place, but it's better'n a hole in the ground. Suthin' is goin' to happen--you mark my words, boy. I kind o' think Margaret is gittin' anxious to talk with me an' kin't be kept erway no longer. Mebbe the British army is goin' to move. Ye know fer two days an' nights we been hearin' cannon fire." "Solomon, I'm not going out to be shot in the back," said the young man. "If I am to be executed, it must be done with witnesses in proper form. I shall refuse to go. If Margaret should come, and it is possible, I want you to sit down with her in front of my cell so that I can see her, but do not tell her that I am here. It would increase her trouble and do no good. Besides, I could not permit myself to touch her hand even, but I would love to look into her face." So it happened that the proposal which had come to Jack through Mr. Pinhorn was firmly declined, whereupon the astonishment of that official was expressed in a sorrowful gesture and the exclamation: "Doomed! Stubborn youth!" 2 Solomon Binkus was indeed a shrewd man. In the faded packet of letters is one which recites the history of the confinement of the two scouts in the Boston jail. It tells of the coming of Margaret that very evening with an order from the Adjutant General directing Mr. Pinhorn to allow her to talk with the "rebel prisoner Solomon Binkus." The official conducted her to the iron grated door in front of Solomon's cell.