Weighing it evenly in a calmer moment, it was not so greatly to be wondered at. A spy’s life always hangs by the slenderest thread, with all the world that touches him a den of wild beasts ready to tear him limb from limb. Besides, I was in the last ditch of weariness and fatigue and a tired body is next to an empty belly for sapping the courage. But, after all, my soldier caller did not put me under arrest when I was dressed and ready to go with him. On the contrary, he preceded me to Arnold’s house, and when I went in, took up his sentry stand before the entrance, pacing in step with Sir Henry Clinton’s man next door. When I climbed the stair and met the man whose escapes of the night past might have been measured in thicknesses of a hair, the unreasoning terror gripped me again. Arnold was standing with his back to the door when I entered, and when he turned to face me he was scowling darkly and his first question made my heart turn a somersault within me. “Where did you go last night, after you left me, Captain Page?” “Nowhere,--at once,” I asserted, meaning to stay in the boat of truth as long as any two planks of it would hold together. “Your thought that you heard some one in the garden set me to thinking; so I hung off and on here before the house until I saw your lights go out.” “You saw nothing?--heard nothing?” “No. The town was as quiet as I dare say it used to be when the Mynheers snored their nights away in it.” “And afterward?” “Afterward I went to my quarters in the tavern where Lieutenant Castner took me,” I continued, making sure that his next question would knock my boat of truth into splinters, leaving me floundering in a sea of lies. And, truly, I did not feel equal to such a swimming match with him, now, with every drop of blood in me nudging its neighbor to keep awake. “You found all quiet at the tavern?” he demanded, fixing me with his gaze as I have seen a cruel boy pin a fly to the wall. “As quiet as a graveyard. The barman was only half awake, and the waking half of him went to sleep after he had mulled me a cup of wine.” “Strange!” he said; and then he fell to walking the floor, and I had time to catch my breath and to get a fresh grip on myself before he began again. “After your cup of wine, Captain Page? What happened then?” “I went up-stairs to the room they had given me. But my sleep was bad.” “Ha!” said he; “now we are coming to it. What disturbed you?” It was worse than groping in the dark; it was like groping without the sense of touch to guide me. But I had to go on, though I saw that my road might easily end on Gallows Hill. “First I heard, or dreamed I heard, a noise as of men fighting. A little later I’m sure I heard a great deal of loud talk and some oaths, and tramplings in my corridor and on the stair. After that, I was awake most of the time, I think, but I heard no more of the inn noises.” He sat down behind his writing-table and waved me to a chair.