Since boldness is often the truest kind of caution, it was in my mind that I should snatch my chance to pass the sentry and so slip through the gap in the fence to join Arnold in the garden, trusting to my wit to frame a plausible excuse for the intrusion. Though for honor’s sake I had turned my back on the purpose of betraying our chief deserter, I meant to delay my own escape long enough to make sure that Champe was safely out of the way. Try as I might, I could not rid myself of the fear that he might yet be retaken, and in that case he would sorely need a friend at court to save him from the rope. You will say that I might have cut this knot by going with him in the boat, but I confess frankly that I had no stomach for such an enterprise. Indeed, as matters stood at our parting, it was plainly evident that I should have had to kill him or let him kill me to patch up a peace between us. It was with a mind strangely confused by the sudden turn which I had forced our fortunes to take that I climbed the bank and dodged the sentry and made my way by the roundabout route Champe and I had taken, back to the street. I went this way, not because I was afraid to carry out that purpose of going through the garden, but because, in passing the gap in the fence, I found the garden walk untenanted, and a light showing in the upper windows of the house to tell me that Arnold had gone back to his office workroom. With my feet pressing the familiar pavements in front of the house, it came to me suddenly and with a curious little shock that I had lighted upon an entirely new world; a world in which I was at the same moment a man of rejuvenated honor and a hunted fugitive. I say it without shame that for the moment my eyes were dimmed and a rush of emotions too varied to be analyzed came swiftly over me. It is no light thing to fling one’s self, heart and soul, into the accomplishment of a certain purpose and then to turn short and take the path of renunciation at the very climax of success. Yet I felt strangely light-hearted, and as if a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Now that all was over, I could realize very clearly that neither General Washington nor Mr. Hamilton could possibly have foreseen any such wading in the pool of duplicity for me as that into which my emprise had pushed me. Also, I understood that when they should be made aware of all the circumstances they would be the first to approve this final step of withdrawal which, lacking Beatrix Leigh’s gentle promptings, I might never have taken.