"With your permission," answered Richard, gallantly, "and if Providence is kind to me, General Howe will find much to say to him." "That is not likely, since the plans are all laid." "Yes; they were not long in the forming," he ventured cautiously. "The division marches to-night." "So soon? I thought it was at ten in the morning?" "No doubt, then, I was misinformed; I was not at the meeting with the couriers. If Major Grant said ten in the morning, then it must be so," he hastily corrected himself; but he had learned one needed item. "I hoped it had been hurried up that it might the sooner be over." "This French marquis is inclined to give us trouble and himself airs." "Indeed, yes; but General Howe will have his revenge when, after this fight to-morrow, he sends the young upstart back to England in chains." "That will he. It would be a glorious sight to see our gallant general capture him with his own hands." "Oh, Major Grant will attend to that," she replied loftily. "General Howe will do his share when he receives the prisoners at Chestnut Hill." So Chestnut Hill road was to be their route. Richard mentally recorded it, while he said with incisive compliment, "Major Grant has the place of honour." The pleasure in her voice when she answered told that the arrow had hit its mark. "Major Grant could have circumvented the rebels with half the five thousand men assigned to him." "He takes so many? 'Tis a large force for so skilful an officer, unless, indeed, the enemy should be very strong." "Oh, I think they reach not half that number." With the hour of starting, the route and the force to be sent, Richard now knew all he had hoped to learn. Grant might return any moment, so that his peril was imminent; and yet the audacity of the adventure gave it such spice that he lingered unwilling, as he was unable to frame an excuse for withdrawing, filling in the pause with comments on the day's festivities. "Your company does not go with the attacking party?" she said presently, as though it were something they both knew positively. "No," he replied, catching the cue, but wondering which company was supposedly his, and for whom had she taken him. "Major Grant told me you would go as the general's escort to receive and guard the prisoners." "That sounds very tame after his own share in the work. Major Grant was surely born under a lucky star, to be so favoured as he is by Mars and the little blind god of love." There was a tone in his voice that she could not fail to understand, and she laughed coyly in answer. He ought to go, he knew; but still he lingered, and presently, urged on by the spirit of recklessness that possessed him, he said: "You have relatives in the south, Mistress Singleton?" "Yes. How did you happen to know?" She turned toward him so abruptly that he was for a moment disconcerted. "Why, it is not a government secret," he said, laughing.