I had turned inland, and was passing the sugar-house prison in the corner of the churchyard, when I met Major Simcoe again; and this time it was he who halted me. “Your fellow-countryman, the sergeant, seems to have got himself into trouble, Captain Page. Had you heard of it?” My heart turned to lead at his words, but I was careful to keep the weight of it out of my face and voice. “Our sergeant seems to trouble you much more than he does me, Major,” I said, trying to say it as lightly as I could. “What has he been doing now?” The major laughed. “That remains to be determined. He was found prowling about the waterside in citizen’s clothes a little while ago, and since he could give no reasonable account of himself to the officer of the guard, he was clapped into a cell.” I was burning to ask if the news of this climaxing disaster had been carried to Arnold, but I dared not. So I escaped from the major as I could, and hurried down to Fort George, passing the door of Arnold’s house on the way, as one might take a morning’s saunter in front of a cannon loaded, and with the slow-match burning. At the fort the commandant, a British officer of the bulldog type, was exceedingly brusk with me, paying his backhanded compliment to the uniform I wore, and at first would give me no satisfaction whatever. “The man was first a deserter from the rebels, and now he has shed his regimentals, and was trying to desert from us,” he said sharply. “Of course, Mr. Arnold will do what he pleases with him, but if the matter lay with me, he would stretch a cord very promptly, Captain.” “Fortunately, the matter does not lie with you,” I retorted, matching his sharpness. “You have blundered, as some of you gentlemen in the king’s service seem quite prone to do. Sergeant Champe was on duty when you arrested him, and that duty required that he should not appear in his regimentals, as it also required secrecy on his part, even under the questioning of so great a man as you are, Mr. Commandant. I’ll trouble you to set the sergeant at liberty, sir.” “Upon order, certainly, Captain,” said my bulldog stubbornly. “You have your order, sir,” I retorted, bristling back at him. “I have not seen it,” he remarked. “By heaven, sir, you are hearing it!” I cried. “Do you require me to go back to Sir Henry Clinton and General Arnold, with the information that you decline to take the word of the general’s aide?” Now there are bullies who can not be bullied, but happily the commandant was not one of them. When I was turning upon my heel, as if in a passion, he called me back. “I know you are Mr. Arnold’s aide, Captain,” he said, rather less truculently, “but duty is duty, and--” “Oh, very well,” I said, “it is but a matter of walking up to Sir Henry’s house and telling him that your meddlesome interference has doubtless spoiled the service upon which the sergeant was engaged.”