“Champe will be sent to the fleet to-night to rejoin his legion: I’ll see it done, myself,” was Castner’s promise, and that promise, which was carried out some hours later, did, indeed save Champe from the hangman’s halter, though it sent him with Arnold’s legion to the Virginia ravaging and was, besides, the father to all of the poor sergeant’s wanderings and perils through the weary weeks and months which were to intervene before he could make good his escape and rejoin our army, a ragged, half-starved fugitive, in far-away Georgia. XXII IN THE POWDER-ROOM WHEN Castner turned me over to the guard I was taken to a high-arched, brick-walled chamber buried in the battlements of the fort beyond the barracks. By its location I took the cell to be the powder-room of the old Dutch fortress antedating Fort George by a century or more; guessing at this because the place was too spacious to figure as a dungeon, and much too gloomy to be put to any other use. By all the obligations of a decent upbringing at the hands of godly parents, I suppose I should have gone down on my two knees to spend the few hours that were left in making my peace with God. Certain it is that there were sins enough to be repented of, though I hope and trust they were chiefly soldier sins, and not the kind that make a sniveling craven of the sinner at the last. As to this, however, these death-hour penitences have always seemed to me to be a rather pitiful and unworthy begging of the Great Question; and, besides, hope dies hard in vigorous youth, especially when it is fed by anxiety for the unknown fate of a loved one. So, when I heard the big key grate in the lock at the outgoing of Corporal Warnock, my jailer, I took the candle which Warnock’s, or Castner’s, kindness allowed me, and began a searching review of my dungeon. From the furnishings, a blanketed bunk-bed in one corner, a small table untidy with candle drippings, and a heavy three-legged stool, I judged that the place had been lately used by the British occupiers as a guard-room for the detention of petty military offenders. Beyond this there was little to be remarked save that the bricks in the walls were old and crumbling, that the arch of the ceiling had fallen out in several places to litter the earthen floor with débris, and that the door was strong and new and solid enough to stop a battering-ram. After a careful scrutiny of the door and its massive lock there seemed to be little left for hope to build upon. Having been designed for a magazine, the brick-lined cavern had no window or other outlet; as, indeed, it could not well have, being sunk in the earthwork. Hence, a second tour of the place, in which I made use of the heavy little stool to sound the walls, promised nothing, you would say. Yet to this seemingly fruitless proceeding hope owed the fresh lease of life which was to carry it in some fashion over the high crisis of despair.