“Tell me where she lives, Captain Page,” he said slyly, “and I’ll promise to go in person to make your excuses. Nay, no cunningly devised fables, sir, if you please; it is always a woman who hangs to our coat-skirts at the plunging moment. But seriously,” and now his face was grave, “there should not be an hour’s delay. Not to mention our sergeant’s safety, which seems to be hanging in a most precarious balance, there is a sharp chance of your missing the target entirely. Word has come that Arnold is embodying, or has embodied, a regiment with which he may take the field at any moment. No, you must go to-night, if you go at all.”
“But you were not expecting me here from Colonel Baylor’s camp until midnight,” I protested, trying to gain time for the shaping of some excuse that would hide the truth and still seem something less than childish.
“For the anticipating of which expectation by some hours, we are discussing this matter here in comfort before my fire, instead of on horseback and on the southward road, Captain Page. I had planned to ride with you to our outposts, enlisting you as we went.”
“Yet—good lord, Mr. Hamilton! if I could tell you—if I only dared tell you what it will cost me to go to-night....”
He spread his slender hands in a most gentlemanly way.
“I have laid no commands upon you for the services, Captain Page; as I have said, your going rests entirely with yourself. Nor must you think I am trying to bribe you when I point out that the man who carries the enterprise through will have earned much at the hands of his country and of the army. It is for you to decide whether this obstacle of yours is great enough to weigh against the arguments for instant despatch—remembering that these arguments may well include the life of the worthy soldier who has piloted out the way for you.”
It has always been my failing to omit to count the personal cost of anything until the day of reckoning rises up to slap me in the face.
“I’ll go—to-night,” I said grittingly. “But if I could leave an explanatory word with Pettus——”
Again he stopped me in mid-career with a hand laid affectionately on my shoulder.
“You would cancel my permission with your own sober second thought, my dear Captain. That second thought will tell you that there must be no hint, no word or whisper that could remotely point toward your purpose. Further, you must go back to Pettus, smooth over as best you can your visit to me here, and lull his curiosity, if he have any. Then, if you can not tell him point-blank the lie about your returning northward to-night, wait until he is asleep, and make your escape as you can.”