“I’m coming to that, too. This spy was caught, _fragranty delictum_, a few hours after you left the camp. Handily invited, with the turn of a cord around his two thumbs, he told what he could pick out of Mr. Hamilton’s talk to you heard from his hiding-place under Mr. Hamilton’s bed in the next room. He had it all down pat; your name and rank and mine, and the whole story of my plot and your cutting in to help me. But he protested to the last gasp that his knowledge was all of the ear; that he saw nothing--being under the bed--and wouldn’t know either of us by sight.” “To the last gasp, you say--then they hanged him?” I said, feeling a great burden lifted. “Unluckily, they didn’t. He had his drumhead trial, and was to stretch a cord at daybreak. Two hours before dawn they changed guard at the hut where he was in keeping, and the relief found the hut empty. The man was gone.” “Oh, good lord!” I exclaimed. “We are not the only ones to tangle our feet and fall down over them, it seems. He’ll be here on top of us, next, I take it.” “He is here,” said Champe impressively. “But to take things as they come: Major Lee’s first care, of course, was to send a warning to us. By good fortune, Mr. Baldwin chanced to be in Tappan, so the major had his letter carrier at hand. So down comes our warning, with a peremptory order at the tail of it. If the letter finds us still alive and at large, we are to throw down the tools and quit the job, evacuate the works, burn the baggage wagons--in other words, we are to save our necks if we can.” “Humph!” said I. “If I’m guessing straight at the hinder end of your tale, Major Lee’s very excellent advice comes a good few hours too late, doesn’t it?” “Right you are, Captain Dick,” asserted my news-bringer. “The spy is here in New York, and he has enough powder in his noddle to blow us both safely to Heaven if we had as many lives as the cat. Mr. Baldwin, who knows him, saw the man at his trial, and happily Mr. Baldwin is a good enough friend of ours to want to save our bacon. So, from the time when he crossed the river last night, he kept a sharp eye out for this Mr. James Askew, which is the name our man goes by.” “Good! And he found him?” “Found him early this morning, and followed him to his dodging-hole, which was the tavern of the Three Larks on the east shore road. His next care was to deliver the major’s letter to me, and, having done that, he put himself at our disposal in any helpful way that offered.” I nodded. “Mr. Baldwin is trying fair to earn his fee of two hundred guineas, five hundred acres of land and three negroes, which, as Mr. Hamilton told me, was to be his reward for the letter carrying,” I said. “Did you retain him?”