“Captain Page, your conviction,”--I remarked that he used the word,--“does not turn upon these preliminaries, which serve merely to show premeditation and design. Whether you came as Mr. Washington’s emissary, or upon your own initiative, matters not: the fact remains that you not only intended to kidnap General Arnold; you have actually made the attempt. Do you deny that, sir?” I did not see what good could come of adding lies to lies, at least, in my own behalf. By this time it must be known that Champe and I were the two who had eaten our suppers in the Dutch boat-builder’s house, the two who had stolen the boat, and, quite as inevitably, the two who had broken into Arnold’s house to find the empty bed. If I hesitated, it was only because I was striving to devise some way of saving Champe. “I do not deny it,” I said, when the pause had grown to an impossible length. “Ah!” said the major; and the exclamation was echoed in an audible sigh of relief on all sides. Then, fixing me with a look that was not all unkindly, Simcoe went on. “Your opportunities for carrying out your desperate enterprise have been all that you could ask; you have so won upon General Arnold’s confidence that he has trusted you fully, and even now, he yields only to the incontestable facts, and would shield you if he could. You must have had more than one chance of carrying out your design.” “I had,” I broke in. “No more than an hour ago, Mr. Arnold was walking in his garden, alone. Once he came and stood within an arm’s reach of me; and I had a boat at the river’s edge in which to make my escape.” “Ah!” he said again, and this time the exclamation was a sharp indrawing of the breath. “You spared him; will you tell us why, Captain Page? It can make no difference for or against you, now.” “It is easily explained,” I said, smiling to give dissimulation the proper mask. “There were two of us; and at the crucial instant one of the two could not, or rather would not, rise to his opportunity--when he found out what that opportunity really meant.” Simcoe nodded, and I marked the swift glance of intelligence that passed from one to another of my judges. Once more I had been able to impose upon them. They were saying to themselves that at the crisis the loyal sergeant had refused to be dragged into the kidnapping--which was as I had hoped. After which, Phillips took me up. “Add a little more to your frankness, Mr. Page, and earn the satisfaction that comes from doing a worthy deed at the last,” he said austerely. “Do you confess that you have made a tool of Sergeant Champe in all this conspiracy?”