I showed Arnold’s note to Castner, and the lieutenant very kindly offered to expedite my affair by looking after my impedimenta; which was light enough, since I had only the clothes I stood in, the civilian’s suit I had bought of the Dutch Jew, and my patriot homespun. I was the more willing to turn Castner loose in my room for the packing up, because there were no papers, plans of fortifications or any other spy’s death-sentences for him to stumble on, and it lent a fine air of sincerity to my new pledge to give him my keys and to tell him to take or leave what he chose. This left me free to accompany the orderly who had brought Arnold’s note, and the young man, a fine young gentleman who was a son of that Colonel Hetheridge who was killed at the battle of Monmouth, walked with me to the door of Arnold’s quarters. I found the traitor busily writing, as he seemed always to be at my entrances. And, as on a former occasion, he waved me to a chair and went on pushing the quill like a regimental clerk who had got behind in his records. When he had folded, sealed and superscribed his letter, he turned to me, and I saw that Sergeant-Major Champe had not failed either himself or me in the cross-questioning of the early morning. “You are quite refreshed, Captain Page?” he began most kindly; and again I caught myself wishing that he would not so persistently show me the likeable side of him. “You are fortunate in having no family ties to break when we turn our backs upon New York. Will you take it as an older man’s weakness if I say that I shall leave my heart behind me when we sail, Captain Page?” I said that his sentiment did him honor; adding that I had once had the pleasure of meeting Mistress Arnold while she was yet Mistress Margaret Shippen in Philadelphia. “A dear lady, with a heart of pure gold,” he said half musingly. And then more pointedly to me: “She remembers you, Captain--which is the chief reason why I am going to let you be the bearer of this farewell note of mine. You can find the house again?” “Surely,” I replied; and for the instant I forgot my sworn purpose in sudden gratitude to him for putting me so easily and naturally on the way to a fulfilment of my own desires. “She will see you--as she might not wish to see another,” he continued. “Tell her only cheerful things, Captain Page. Though she does not know our destination or our purposes, she is weighed down with a presentiment of evil to come. That is why I am writing and sending you. There are limits to the sternest fortitude, and I--”