Then this major, whose name I have never known, rose up in his place and gripped my hand most heartily.
“You are a true man and a gentleman, Captain Richard Page, notwithstanding the fact that we shall have to hang you presently,” he said, with bluff good nature; and I thanked him gravely, with that curious prickling that I speak of tingling in my finger-ends.
After this, Major Simcoe asked if I had anything further to say before I should be remanded under guard, and I rose and said I had, if the gentlemen present would bear with me. At General Phillips’s nod, I went on.
“One thing I wish to say is this: as Lieutenant Castner has explained, the spy, James Askew, went to his long account by an accident. But Mr. Castner’s sword has merely saved your hangman an item in his day’s work. I had speech with Askew two days since, as he may or may not have confessed to Lieutenant Castner. In the course of that interview he admitted to me, inadvertently, that he was the man who sold Major André to those who took him.”
The effect of this little shot was quite what I had expected. There were deep and bitter oaths of satisfaction at Askew’s death, and more than one word of thanks to me for setting this matter, which had been in doubt, finally at rest. This emboldened me to go on, for I had a boon to ask.
“That is one thing, General Phillips,” I said, addressing the highest authority I could reach. “Another is in the nature of a condemned man’s final request. I have an unfinished engagement with Captain Howard Seytoun, an engagement entered into before I left the camp at Tappan, and I pray you to grant me a short quarter-hour with him on the fort parade or in a guarded room, under such restrictions as you may see fit to impose.”
I don’t know what might have come of this request if Seytoun had held his peace. The British officers of Sir Henry Clinton’s military family were great sticklers for the point of honor, notwithstanding the well-known opposition of the knight himself to the common practise of dueling. But Seytoun must needs draw himself up scornfully and say that he had no cause of quarrel sufficient to make him wish to give satisfaction to a condemned spy.
At this, I went rage-mad, of course, like a hot-headed fool, and sprang across the intervening space and struck him; after which I was hustled off under guard, as I deserved to be for so greatly offending the dignity of the court; hustled out, and across the parade ground, and into a cold, bare barracks room, where Castner came to find me a few minutes later.
“Well?” I said, rightly guessing that he was the bearer of news.
“Your sentence has been passed, Captain Page, and now that I know you better, I am truly sorry to be General Phillips’s messenger. You are to be confined in a cell under the battlements of the fort until midnight, at which hour you will be taken to Gallows Hill and hanged. It is a terrible short road for you, Captain, and I begged them to make it a little longer, but—”