I gave the cue at the instant when Arnold looked up and saw us. As one man, we both halted, faced right, and made the formal salute. Then, throwing every faculty of my exhausted soul into the effort to appear the living mirror of shocked surprise, I exclaimed: “Why, General!—Good heavens, sir! You—you did not sleep at home?”
There was a look in his gloomy eyes that made me shiver when he confronted me calmly and said, “No, Captain Page; I did not sleep at home.”
“Then—then we have been standing our long guard over an empty house?” I faltered; and the faltering was no more than half insincere, if it were that.
“Why should you stand guard at all, Captain Page?” he asked, never relaxing the accusing eye-grip.
“Surely you must have heard?” I protested. “You might well say that no man holding his commission from you could do less than to try to guard your person at such a time as this, General Arnold!”
“Ah? And what have you heard?”
“Only what all the town is whispering: that two of Washington’s emissaries, masking as deserters from the rebel army, are here for the purpose of abducting you, sir; that these men—the better to cover their designs—are enlisted in the Loyal Americans; and that these two, a rank and a warrant officer, are missing.”
“You heard all this?” he queried slowly. “And in the face of it you come here to stand a night guard over my house?”
“Surely, sir; and why not? It seemed a moment when loyalty might do well to assert itself; the more since some suspicious occurrences—”
“You are either a very brave and true man, or a very rash one, Captain Page,” he said, breaking in upon me. “Did they not whisper you the names of these two suspected men?”