I shall always remember with reminiscent thrillings how welcome were the first signs of approaching day; the lifting of the fog over the river, and beyond that, its graying and thinning to transparency; the long roll of the drums sounding the reveille in the fort; the slamming open of shutters as the houses awoke; the cheerful clatter of Hetheridge’s horse as the young orderly rode up to Sir Henry’s door and dismounted. After a little the fog soared aloft to transform itself into wisp-like clouds high overhead, and the eastern sky reddened, and a horse-boy, whistling André’s _Cow Chase_ lately set to music, came out in front of the tavern and began to take down the shutters. Then a housemaid, with her bucket of steaming water and cloths and brushes, opened the door and knelt to scrub the steps. And still the sergeant and I tramped heavily to and fro and waited; and still the man who had slept away from his house did not return. It was now that the delay began to eat like acid into our very bones. Preparation, a stout bracing for the plunge, is all well enough in its way; but too much of it will curdle the blood in the bravest veins and make a trembling coward of the biggest hero that ever wore laurel. Champe never knew or suspected it, I hope, but for me there were moments after that dawn-breaking when a desire to fly to any sand heap big enough to dig me a burrow in, was almost overpowering. The suspense came to an end at length, as all things in a world of meetings and partings must. I saw Arnold first. He was coming down the street, walking soberly with his head down and his hands behind him; a habit dating, they said, from the day when he had put it forever out of his power to hold his head up among honest men. So walking, he was almost up to us before he saw us; and I could feel Champe’s eyes fairly boring into the back of my neck for fear I should be giving him his cue and he would miss it. I gave the cue at the instant when Arnold looked up and saw us. As one man, we both halted, faced right, and made the formal salute. Then, throwing every faculty of my exhausted soul into the effort to appear the living mirror of shocked surprise, I exclaimed: “Why, General!--Good heavens, sir! You--you did not sleep at home?” There was a look in his gloomy eyes that made me shiver when he confronted me calmly and said, “No, Captain Page; I did not sleep at home.” “Then--then we have been standing our long guard over an empty house?” I faltered; and the faltering was no more than half insincere, if it were that. “Why should you stand guard at all, Captain Page?” he asked, never relaxing the accusing eye-grip. “Surely you must have heard?” I protested. “You might well say that no man holding his commission from you could do less than to try to guard your person at such a time as this, General Arnold!” “Ah? And what have _you_ heard?”