“Why, then,” said the General, “that should give us the best evidence. Major, go you with the child to her mother's and bring me those books.”
It was not the first call I had made on Peg's mother, but this night the garrulous old soul would so launch herself upon wide waters of gossip, and never quit until she crossed them from shore to shore, that it leaned towards ten of the clock when Peg and I, taking the road in our hands, as say the Spaniards, went forth for our return.
The night was dark and still, and a moist promise of rain hung in the air. Our way lay from the south, diagonally across the wooded patch called the Mall. We were finding our path without trouble, Peg keeping close and warm to my side, with a hand gripping my arm, and had gone some distance when, in a way of dull faintness, a sound like the fall of a stealthy foot on the grass overtook my ear. Peg heard it as soon as I.
“Are we dogged?” she asked. Peg showed no fear, but bit off her words in a manner vicious and resentful.
“That we may soon know,” said I. Then I drew her in by a clump of bushes where her white frock would be screened. “It should be a strange thing if any save ourselves were going this road at such an hour.”
We had been but a moment hidden by the trees when a dark figure crouched past us with furtive, hurrying step that made it plain he followed as a spy. As he would have brushed by, I stretched out and seized him by the shoulder. The creature screamed like a hare when the dogs snap her up.
Now I lugged him to the open, and, for all the night was moonless and no stars because of clouds, it puzzled neither Peg nor myself to make out the Reverend Campbell. The fellow hung in my hand like a rag, and beyond that first shrill screech uttered not a word.
“What shall I do with him?” I asked, still holding him in my grasp like something dead.
“Kill him!” cried Peg; “kill him with your great hands!” And then, while I was dumb before the sudden murderous fury of her tones, Peg began to plead the other way about. “Let him go free,” she said. “He's not worth punishment. And yet it is sure he was after us as a spy.”
“I think,” said I, “it would do no harm to throw him in yonder water.”