I thought a moment upon it.
“The river is the quicker. I have a boat at Nyack; the one in which I pulled from Teller’s Point to-day.”
There was a little pause after this, and I saw that my companion was staring thoughtfully into the fire.
“We have been going at too fast a gallop, Captain Page,” he said at the end of the pause. “We must go back a moment to that point that was raised in the beginning. If you could go with your troop at your back and cut the traitor out and bring him home that would be one thing—and I know of no man fitter to attempt it. But to go as you must go, and use guile and subterfuge ... truly, Captain Page, you must sort this out for yourself; to determine how far in such a cause an officer and a man of honor may go. I lay no commands upon you.”
I put the scruple aside impatiently.
“Benedict Arnold has put himself beyond the pale, Colonel Hamilton. There can be no question of honor in dealing with such as he.”
“Perhaps not,” was the low-toned reply; “though that word of yours is most sweeping and far-reaching. I mean only to leave you free, Captain Page. Our desires, keen as they are, shall not run farther than your own convictions of an honorable man’s duty.” Then he looked at his watch. “The tide serves at eleven, and you have the borrowed horse to return to Nyack. It is best so, since in that way you will seem to be returning to your troop at Salem.”
His mention of the borrowed horse first set me to wondering how he came to know that I had borrowed a horse; but a moment later the wonder went out in a blaze of sudden recollection. As I am a living man, up to that instant I had clean forgotten that I was pledged to meet Captain Howard Seytoun at dawn-breaking in the grass cove at the river’s edge!
I was on my feet and breathing hard when I broke out hotly: “Good heavens, Colonel Hamilton! I can not go to-night; it is impossible! A thing I had forgotten——”
He rose in his turn and faced me smiling.