‘Humph!’ muttered the general as they pushed through the trees. ‘It is not a little odd that your pig-headed sentry does not challenge us.—Halt!’ he called to the corporal. ‘We will go on alone. March forward when I hail you.’ They went on for another twenty paces, and still remained unchallenged, which was not so very odd after all, considering that there was no one there to challenge them. ‘It is very singular,’ murmured poor Captain Hopkins. ‘I can’t have mistaken the place.—General! General!’ he cried, ‘you were right. I have been fooled. The boat is gone!’ General Shields uttered a fierce exclamation. ‘I’ll be hanged if I didn’t think so from the very first,’ he shouted: ‘Here, corporal, bring up your men.—You should not have moved from this spot, sir, when once you lost possession of those papers,’ he thundered at the unfortunate Hopkins. ‘You should have died rather than let them fall into the hands of the enemy, and as you once suspected trickery, there is no excuse for you.’ ‘That was at first, sir,’ stammered Hopkins. ‘Afterwards I had every reason to believe that’—— ‘Silence!’ raged Shields. ‘Your carelessness has effected enough already without your offering lame explanations. Heaven only knows what the consequences of this wretched fiasco will be to us.—Corporal!’ ‘Sir,’ answered the corporal, saluting. But before the general could issue his order, whatever it was, Hopkins, who had been groping about in the undergrowth, shouted excitedly: ‘Here are the oars and the rowlocks, general, just where I hid them. If the fellow has cut the boat adrift and gone in her, he can’t be far off.’ ‘Can’t he?’ sneered Shields. ‘And how do you know, sir, that the rascal had not a boat of his own under the bank, and simply cut yours adrift to lessen the chances of pursuit?’ The bitter suggestion appeared to confound Hopkins for a moment, but he answered humbly: ‘Of course, general, we must allow for possibilities; but if I may be permitted to say so, if the fellow had no boat of his own, and swung out into the stream in mine before he noticed the absence of oars, the current would carry him rapidly down stream. He could not land either on one side or the other.’ ‘No,’ sneered the general again; ‘and with a current like that, I think we might as well look for him at Harper’s Ferry by this time. Further, you seem to forget, sir, that the man had the use of his hands, and by clinging to the trees alongside the bank, might very well work the boat up stream in the direction of the enemy.—Moreover,’ he muttered vexedly to himself, ‘we have no proof that he ever left dry land. Such a fellow, in Federal uniform, too, might pass anywhere.—And I’ll be bound, sir,’ he flashed out at the miserable Hopkins, ‘that your carelessness has put him in possession of the countersign. Gad! I shall have him mounting guard outside my quarters to-night if I don’t take care. This must be seen to.—What was he like, sir? What was he like? Describe him.’