In this noiseless circuiting Champe went to the right and I to the left, and we met in the far corner where the high, four-posted bed filled a sort of alcove built to contain it. Then I think we both drew breath of relief, for the bed was empty. “Wait for me,” whispered my companion; and when he returned a little later he had relighted our candle and was carrying it high above his head. But the candle told us nothing more than our gropings had. The room was unoccupied; was bare of any lodger’s belongings; had evidently been undisturbed since its daytime redding by the chamber-maid. But in the partition wall between it and my room we found the peep-hole which, on the principle of locking the stable after the horse had been most successfully stolen, we carefully plugged. When we were before my fire again we were little wiser than when we had left it. Our danger turned upon a question of time. When was the hole bored through the partition wall? There was no way of determining this: but Champe was sure he had heard footsteps in the adjoining room at the moment when he had called my attention. “Take it whatever way you please,” he said; “there’s somebody in this house who suspects you. What we have talked here to-night would hang a whole regiment, and it’s my notion that our spy has heard all he needs to hear and has gone for help to take us.” “In that case,” said I, “since we can die but once, I for my part choose to die fighting rather than at the rope’s end.” So I got up and barred the door. “Right you are, my Captain,” Champe agreed most heartily; and then we took stock of our weapons. Fortunately we were provided with the tools we both knew best how to use. My trooper sword, which I had brought off in the boat escape from Nyack, was with my portmanteau; and this I gave to Champe. For myself there was the captain’s rapier that went with my rank as Arnold’s aide; a good serviceable Scottish blade which I had carefully selected from a dozen or more in the barracks armory for its hang and balance. I thought we should be able to give a pretty good account of ourselves when the time came, and so much I said to Champe. “Aye,” he replied. “They’ll take the muskets to us before they get us, and then I’ll pray only that they’ll shoot straight. Also, I’ll pray that they do not keep us waiting over-long; I’m fair dead for sleep.” At this I remembered that the sergeant had lost the whole of the preceding night, as I had, and that he had not had my chance of sleeping out the day in recompense. So, when a full half-hour had passed with no signs or sounds of the expected arresting party, I told Champe to roll himself once more in the bed-covers, leaving me to keep watch. The lack of a boat put any action out of the question for the night; and, deplore it as we might, another day must elapse before we could flog our simple garroting plot into shape.