“Ah; now we are coming upon some more habitable ground. Outwardly, you are a Loyalist, Mr. Page, and inwardly, I doubt not, a true patriot. I am neither. I had thought of asking a hundred guineas for this news I carry--it is not too much, you would say?--and it doesn’t matter a boddle to me whose money it is. In other words, your gold will have as true a ring in my ears as Sir Henry Clinton’s, or even Mr. Arnold’s.” “Bah!” I said; “you would take my money one minute and sell me to the highest bidder the next.” He nodded slowly. “You have pointed out a risk--a certain risk to yourself. I might not keep faith with you. Still, the chances are somewhat in your favor. The matter you touched upon while we were together in the street--the calumny connecting me with Major André’s misfortune--would have its weight. Having sold you your timely lump of silence and pocketed my price--” “You might be willing to let well enough alone and not try to double on me? I think that is most unlikely, Mr. Askew. Don’t you?” “It is a nice point,” he said, as if deliberating on it. “On the one hand, I have my hundred guineas without the risk. On the other, since I was willing to take the risk to earn them from Clinton or Arnold, why should I hesitate to try the doubling? Ah, I have it! You have heard the saying that money is always cowardly, Mr. Page? With your hundred guineas in my pocket, each cowardly guinea of them will be persuading me to save its life--and yours.” I laughed. The thing had risen to the plane of humor. Here was a man whose life lay in my hand, and he was trying, not to bribe me to spare him, but to persuade me to give him a handsome present for the privilege of sparing him! But when the laugh was over, the dilemma still remained, with its horns as sharp as before. If I could not kill this scoundrel in cold blood, neither could I turn him loose, with or without a golden bid for his silence. I thought it out calmly and saw no middle way. The man must die, but I would give him an honester man’s chance to die fighting. My saber was standing in the chimney corner where Champe had left it the night before. I drew it from the sheath and laid it on the table, with the hilt to my spy’s hand. “Take it and do your best,” I said. “We have spent too many words and too much time.” But he merely shook his head soberly and locked his hands over one knee. “I should be a greater ninny than I hoped you took me for, to give you so good an excuse for pinking me, Captain Page. I am no swashbuckling horse-soldier, to tangle my legs in a sword, or to know how to use one.”