"They mean to murder me!" he yelled. "Keep your savages away, I tell you!"--struggling between Tahioni and Joe--"I'll say what you wish, if they won't burn me!----" "Be silent," I said. "We mean no bodily harm to you. Compose yourself, Captain Moucher. Do you take me for a monster to threaten you with torture?" But the awful fear of fire was in this whimpering wretch, and I was ashamed to have my Oneidas see a white man so stricken with cowardly terrors. His honour--what there was of it--he sold in stammering phrases to buy mercy of us; and I listened in disgust and astonishment to his confession, which came in a pell-mell of tumbling words, so that I was put to it to write down what he babbled. He had gone on his knees, held back from my feet by the Oneida; and his poltroonery so sickened me that I could scarce see what I wrote down in my _carnet_. Every word was a betrayal of comrades; every whine a plea for his own blotched skin. To save his neck--if treachery might save it--he sold his King, his cause, his comrades, and his own manhood. And so I learned of him that Stevie Watts, disguised, had been that night at Summer House with Lieutenant Hare; that they had brought news to Lady Johnson of Sir John's safe arrival in Canada; that they had met and talked to Claudia Swift; had counted our men and made a very accurate report, which was writ in the military cipher which we discovered, and a copy of which Captain Watts also carried upon his proper person. I learned that Walter Butler, now a captain of Royalist Rangers, also had come into the Valley in disguise, for the purpose of spying and of raising the Tory settlers against us. I learned that Brant and Guy Johnson had been in England, but were on their way hither. I learned that our army in Canada, decimated by battle, by smallpox, by fever, was giving ground and slowly retreating on Crown Point; and that Arnold now commanded them. I learned that we were to be invaded from the west, the north, and the south by three armies, and thousands of savages; that Albany must burn, and Tryon flame from Schenectady to Saint Sacrement.... And I wrote all down. "Is there more?" I asked, looking at him with utter loathing. "Howell's house," he muttered, "the log house of John Howell--tonight----" "The cabin on the hard ridge yonder?" "Yes.... A plot to massacre this post.... They meet there." "Who?" "King's people.... John Howell, Dries Bowman, the Cadys, the Helmers, Girty, Dawling, Gene Grinnis, Balty Weed----" "_Tonight!_" "Yes." "Where are they now?" "Hid in the tamaracks--in the bush--God knows where!----" "When do they rendezvous?" "Toward midnight." "At John Howell's cabin?" He nodded, muttering. I got up, took him by the arm and jerked him to his feet. "Read this!" I said, and thrust the paper of cipher writing under his nose. But he could not, saying that Steve Watts had writ it, and that he was to carry it express to Oswego.