Joe now had his opportunity to peruse the writing, and, being a better reader than his companions, quickly gathered the meaning of the brief lines. Running over to the leader, he seized his hand and shook it vigorously.
“I deem it an honor to serve under you,” he declared, “an’ you’ll find I can keep a secret, if I am always eager to solve one. But what are we to call you?”
“For the present I am to be known to you, as I shall be to the British, as Ira Le Geyt,” was the smiling reply.
“The Tory!”
“The spy!”
“The renegade!”
These three exclamations escaped the lips of the hearers in sheer amazement.
“Tory, spy, and renegade,” was the quiet reply. “Do you fear that I can’t play the part?”
“Not that, sir,” Dan answered hastily. “It’s the danger you run. ’Spose some one happens into the camp who knows the real Ira, or what if he happened to show up? You’d be in a tight place.”
“General Schuyler has the real Ira where he can’t make any trouble,” was the reply, “and I have the young Tory’s entire outfit in yonder canoe—rifle, clothes, commission as a scout in Burgoyne’s army, and, as you have seen, his iron cross, the token by which he was to come and go among the Indians. Some say that in form and feature we are not unlike. I hope, therefore, to pass myself off for him. Of course there is a risk, but I am willing to take that for the sake of the Cause.”