“Think?” he echoed; “think? Why, Captain Dick, isn’t it the very bone and marrow of the thing we’ve been praying for? We’ve but to go quietly and raise the boat from the river-bottom where we sank it, to make all ready, nab him, and away up-river in the darkness. The very night belongs to us--black dark, and with the wind quartering right to blow us where we wish to go. Come; we are wasting the precious minutes!” And while he was struggling into his watchcoat he kept on saying over and over again: “Good God--if he will only give us time!” He was out and away before I could say more to him, and I followed more leisurely, turning over in my mind a dozen expedients which might serve in the last resort to make this climaxing broadside flash in the pan. For now there was no more hesitation. In the open field, or even with the poor chance that the hunted fox has, after he has heard the dogs baying at his heels, I would have flung myself upon the traitor to take him, or let him kill me as I tried. But to win his confidence, as I had, and then to steal up and garrote him like a wretched footpad was no longer among the possibilities for an officer and a gentleman--and a Virginian. None the less, there was a thing to be done, and done quickly. Champe had no such scruples as these I had so lately admitted, and I must swiftly invent a way to stop him from putting his neck solus, as you might say, into the hangman’s halter. For I made no doubt that, lacking my help or countenance at the pinch, my dour-faced sergeant would thrust me aside, with a saber slash if no other means offered, and fling himself madly into the kidnapping breach single-handed and alone. You are to figure these reflections flashing themselves upon the mental mirror as I stepped from the fireless guard-room into the broad entrance hall which was used as a lounging place indifferently by Arnold’s aides or Sir Henry Clinton’s. When I passed through there were three young fellows with their feet to the fire; young Hetheridge, Ensign Brewster, and an aide of General Phillips’ whose name I had heard but had promptly forgotten. “Good evening to you, Captain Page,” said Hetheridge; “are you off after your black-faced sergeant? What ails the beggar that half the time he forgets to salute his betters in passing?” I was about to make some indifferent rejoinder and go on to the door when the thought struck me that here was a chance to drive a small nail for Champe against the day of need. “The sergeant is a law to himself, like one of the old Cromwell Ironsides,” I replied lightly. “He should have been born in the other century, when we should have seen him going about with a Bible in one hand and a two-edged slaughter sword in the other. I advise you young gentlemen to walk straight: otherwise he’ll be denouncing you as traitors, some fine day when you least suspect it.” Brewster laughed.