It was the end of him, as well as of the sword play. He was just in time to catch the swift following thrust with which Castner replied to my attack, and the lieutenant’s blade passed clean through him; through his heart, I think, for he dropped like a stone, and gave only a shiver before his eyes glazed and his jaw fell. This was my fair chance to kill Lieutenant Charles Castner, of the King’s Own; but I hope we Pages are something better than assassins, even when the blood is hot and we are fighting for our lives. My point went to the floor, and I stepped back to let Castner disengage; then the musketeers flung their pieces aside and made their smothering rush, and I was done. The lieutenant was considerably out of breath when he pulled his sword from the spy’s body and fell fiercely upon his men, who were mishandling me pretty cruelly. “Your word that you will not try to escape, Captain Page!” he panted; but I would not give it. “No; ‘safe bind, safe find,’ is your motto, my good friend,” I said cheerfully, holding out my wrists for the cord. It galled him to do it, but he would not fail in any part of his duty. “I have had too much trouble in overtaking you,” he said in extenuation, when the soldiers were tying my hands; with all the riff-raff of idlers turned back now to look on, gaping. “What a pity you have lost your witness,” I remarked, indicating the dead spy. “The less valuable of my witnesses,” he corrected curtly. “Unhappily for you, there is another and more credible one.” This remark of his set me to wondering. Then I remembered the third man who had walked with Castner and the spy in the afternoon--the man whose face I could not see, but whose gait and figure had been singularly familiar. Was this the “more credible” witness? I should soon know. We stayed no time at all in the tavern after the hand-tying. With a word to the inn people about the disposition of the body of James Askew, Castner disciplined his corporal’s guard and we took the open air for it, pointing not for Sir Henry Clinton’s house, as I supposed we should, but on past it toward Fort George. Within the walls of the fort, we marched silently to the house of the commander, a long low structure of Dutch brick, facing the parade ground. Two rooms of it were well lighted, and when the door was opened and I was thrust in, I saw that the court-martial was sitting and waiting for me, and that I was confronting my judges. XXI THE DRUMHEAD COURT SOME of the British officers gathered in the fort commandant’s room to hold the court-martial were known to me by name, but that which gave me the greatest shock was the sight of Major Simcoe, sitting stern and thoughtful behind the up-ended drum. For his presence argued the return of the Queen’s Rangers from their wild-goose chase up the Tarrytown road, and their return promised the collapse of my care-taking plot to insure the escape of Beatrix and my cousin on the _Nancy Jane_.