There was no face on the pillows; no human figure outlined beneath the covers; which were drawn up smoothly as the traitor’s chamber-man, or -woman, had left them. We had struck our blow and it had missed! Champe sat up on the edge of the bed, and I heard his low chuckling laugh. “Shall I bind and gag the pillow, Captain Dick?” he asked sardonically; and then he burst out in a soft-voiced torrent of the most fearsome curses. “The devil takes choice care of his own,” he gritted, at the far end of the outburst. “Four times have I had this Judas fairly in my hands, and four times he has whipped out of them! Not once before in all these two months has he slept away from here, Captain Dick--I’d swear it! And now, on this one night of all the sixty-odd.... Well, shall we go down to the fort and turn ourselves over to the provost-guard?” For the moment it seemed as reasonable as anything else that remained for us to do. But youth dies hard; and youth with the Page blood jumping in its veins the hardest of all. “They call me a daredevil, at home, John Champe,” I said evenly, “and Mr. Hamilton named me so when he asked me to go to help you. I have a mind to do the maddest thing you ever dreamed of, which has its one chance in a million of saving our necks only because it is mad. Do you try it with me?” “Lord, yes,” said the sergeant wearily, “even if it’s to crawl in here between Arnold’s blankets and let him find us so when he comes.” “You may say it is quite as sure a road to Gallows Hill as that would be,” I assented. “But come on: first we must leave the bed and this house exactly as we found them. Can you straighten and smooth the covers without a light?” He said he could, and when he was through we drew the curtains, and took our route in reverse, misplacing nothing, and even staying to put the forced store-room lock back as we had found it. Once more in the garden, we kept to the graveled walk to show no tell-tale foot-prints; and at the fence we were careful to place the fallen board precisely as it had lain before we had kicked it aside to gain our entrance. Five minutes later, we had dodged the sentry again, and had lowered ourselves cautiously to the river brink, where our boat was drawn out. Watching our chance against the pacing sentry, we floated the little craft silently, loaded it with stones enough to kill its buoyancy, and filled it almost to the gunwale with water. Then we made the painter fast to a rock at the river’s edge, pushed the boat out into deep water, and sank it with a quick jerk on the rope. “I should have sent it adrift, and no more said,” commented the sergeant. “And I don’t see yet why you didn’t, Captain Dick,” he said.