He choked, and could say no more; and truly, I think I may say without boasting that I was sorrier for this clean-hearted, noble young fellow than I was for myself, just at the moment. But that sorrow, and my own, and all things else were quickly swept out of my mind by a most miserable anxiety for Beatrix. Had Simcoe’s troopers been ordered to the ships? There was one chance in a thousand that Castner might know, and I put the question to him as he was turning me over to the fort prison guard.
“Tell me, Lieutenant,” I said hurriedly; “do you chance to know if the Queen’s Rangers have been given their embarking orders yet? You will betray no trust in telling a dead man.”
He answered without hesitation.
“They have been embarking this evening since supper,” he said, little thinking what a stone he rolled upon my soul in these few words. And then: “Is there anything else, Captain Page?”
“Yes. From what was said in the court room yonder you doubtless gathered how much, or rather how little, Sergeant Champe has been to blame in all that he was made to bear a part in. Because you are a soldier and a gentleman, Lieutenant Castner, I know you have small respect for Benedict Arnold; but for the same reason I am sure you will say a word to him for this poor fellow who, after all, was your best means of bringing me to book. Will you say that word?”
But now Castner swore savagely and said he would not—to Arnold, though if any move were made to question Champe he would come between as he could.
“That is all I ask,” I interposed. “Champe is but an unlettered fellow, and if you were to put him upon the rack, he would be helpless. I shall hang the easier if you promise that he will be spared.”
“Champe will be sent to the fleet to-night to rejoin his legion: I’ll see it done, myself,” was Castner’s promise, and that promise, which was carried out some hours later, did, indeed save Champe from the hangman’s halter, though it sent him with Arnold’s legion to the Virginia ravaging and was, besides, the father to all of the poor sergeant’s wanderings and perils through the weary weeks and months which were to intervene before he could make good his escape and rejoin our army, a ragged, half-starved fugitive, in far-away Georgia.
XXII
IN THE POWDER-ROOM
WHEN Castner turned me over to the guard I was taken to a high-arched, brick-walled chamber buried in the battlements of the fort beyond the barracks. By its location I took the cell to be the powder-room of the old Dutch fortress antedating Fort George by a century or more; guessing at this because the place was too spacious to figure as a dungeon, and much too gloomy to be put to any other use.