So now I was set mad again upon that elusive chase of Champe, and I had no more idea than a babe unborn what had become of him. Now that I remembered, it struck me like a blow that I had not seen him at all since Arnold and I had passed him on our coming out of the headquarters house in the lower town. After that moment he had been a mere echoing of footsteps in the rearward dark. Worse than this, he had not been our rearguard on the retreat from Mr. Justice Smith’s to the barracks, or if he had, I had not heard him. Being footloose while Arnold was conferring with his officers about the morning’s move to the ships, I used my liberty and my eyes in a painstaking search, scrutinizing every man in sight who wore a legion uniform. But the sergeant was nowhere to be seen. This left me to climb desperately into the breach alone--with no scaling ladder in sight; but lord! what would this life be without its little excitements and its apparently unsolvable problems? I was still alive, unhanged, fit and vigorous; with my sweet lady’s kiss--I could swear she kissed me back again, whether she meant to or no--warm upon my lips, and with two good hours of the night available before the tide would turn to oppose an up-river flight.... The biggest battles of the world had been fought and won in less time, I reflected; and when we left the barracks, I was planning just how I would clinch my man so he should not have a chance to get at those flapped coat pockets with their short-barreled pistols. The onward faring was made in silence, with one of us, at least, listening anxiously for footfalls in the rear--footfalls, which, however, stubbornly refused to become audible. While his moody silence held, I was afraid Arnold would dismiss me at the house door; on which chance I should lose him altogether for the night. But at the very moment of key-fitting he asked me in, saying that there were certain maps of the southern coast which he would like to have me verify for him in the figures of the soundings. This gave me a little extension of the precious time, at all events, and when we were above-stairs, and he had lighted the candles, the maps were spread on the table and I had to quibble afresh, giving him anchorage depths in the Virginia roadways where a fishing-smack would go aground, and otherwise discrediting the makers of the finest set of navigation charts I had ever seen. It encouraged me not a little that he was restless while this map-undoing was going on, walking up and down the room and coming now and then to bend over the table to keep the question and answer alive. I say it encouraged me, for the thing I feared was that he would settle down for the night’s work and tell me to leave him. But so long as he stayed afoot and restive there seemed room for the hope that he might be going out again.