It was an ill time for good thoughts, and, conversely, the very pick and choice of times for the tormenting kind. What masked batteries, trained to blow us into eternity, would the rising sun reveal? We had the little red-nosed navy ensign’s word for it that we had been missed and that the hue and cry had been raised; that the hunt headed, no doubt, by the spy Askew, was already up. Would we be taken before I could try the last brazen-faced throw of the dice? Just here, before this door we were making a mock of guarding, I had parted from my loved one with the heart of gold only a few short hours ago: should I ever see Beatrix Leigh again?--or the men about our own troop fires in the Hudson hills?--or the old home in tidewater Virginia? It seemed altogether unlikely. And Beatrix; what would she say and do when she should hear the news and realize that, while I was no such despicable traitor as she had believed me to be, I was, none the less, to die a traitor’s death with a cord around my neck? Or, rather, was it not most unlikely that she would ever hear of it at all until after the eternal gulf had opened its abysmal chasm between us? Over and again I tried to break away from these thought-furies; to set calm reason on her seat, and to gather resolution for the impending battle of the wits upon the outcome of which our two lives depended. Never had I striven so hard for calmness and self-control; never was the need greater, and never did the attainment seem more blankly impossible. I was unutterably fagged and exhausted; our antagonist would be fresh from a night’s rest, clear-eyed, with every faculty sharpened and alert. I must fight defensively on the slippery ground of deceit and dissimulation, while my opponent had all the advantages of the attack. By some strange good fortune I had been able hitherto to deceive Arnold, by nature the most wary and suspicious of men; but sooner or later there must come a turn in the longest road, and I was racked and tormented by the fear that we were now approaching it. Conned over in its details, the expedient I had hit on seemed foolhardy to a degree and most pitifully unconvincing. Yet it was the only one, and I must try it at all hazards. And as often as I came into collision with the stern necessity, the despairing cry rose up out of the underdepths, “Oh, that the morning would come and let us be at the end of this!” Champe never spoke to me once in all that doleful marching back and forth, nor I to him. I mistrusted that he had his own personal kettle of fish to fry, and that his cooking fire was smoldering evilly or blazing too high as often as mine. But he was not a man to vocalize his soul-wrestlings; and, besides, he had a soldier’s choicest gift--complete reliance on his commanding officer, and a blind confidence that the brain which was paid to do the thinking would somehow contrive to think to some good purpose.