I wondered a little at his reckless haste. Had I been in his shoes, I think I should have considered well before confiding in a man whose very presence was a proof of his perfidy to others. But at that time I had yet to learn that the enlisting of the “Loyal American” Legion had proved a stupendous task for our traitor, and one which tried him to the last reserve of his ambitious will. There were privates in the ranks who scorned to serve under him; and when it came to the officering, the difficulties were almost insurmountable. No British regular would go with him willingly, and the few he had were under peremptory orders from Sir Henry Clinton. So now, when he had a chance to secure a subaltern whose fame as a troop leader was not, if I do say it, altogether of the worst, he caught at it.
I made no bones of accepting the commission, meaning that there should be no occasion for my holding it longer than the kidnapping purpose should require; and so I told him, with more flattery, that myself and my sword were at his disposal, or, if he desired, I would place myself in the ranks, as possibly many a better man had done.
“No, no, Mr. Page,” he made haste to say. “We don’t value you so lightly as that. You shall have a captain’s commission when we are ready to sail, and in the meantime, if you please, you may serve as my aide.”
It was here that my wonder burst into speech. Was the man gone totally blind on the side of caution?
“If I speak freely, Mr. Arnold, it is only a subordinate’s duty,” I began. “As your aide I shall be responsible in some sense for your personal safety. That I can not be, if you take in every piece of flotsam and jetsam that drifts across the lines, as you have me.”
He smiled soberly.
“As I said this morning, Mr. Page, you are either a very shrewd young man, or a very mirror of frankness. Don’t you see that your raising of such a question is the best possible proof of your own purity of motives? But I am not so careless as I may seem. Since we walked together this morning, you have been vouched for by an unimpeachable authority.”
“Now angels and ministers of grace defend us!” said I, to the inward Richard Page: “who in the devil’s name has been thrusting a finger into my pie?” But aloud, I said: “It is a good thing to have friends, Mr. Arnold, even if one can not always thank them for specific favors.”
“Nevertheless, you may soon have an opportunity of thanking this one,” he amended; but after this he left me still bewildered as to the how and when and where, passing at once into detail matters concerning the new legion, telling me of the trouble he had been at to find drillmasters and to get the raw levies whipped into some semblance of an effective fighting force.
After some talk of this nature he began sounding me delicately in the Virginian part of me, and instantly I divined that the new legion was to take the field in that quarter, and that my knowledge of the coast and people was an asset that he was counting on in bribing me with the captain’s commission. Whereupon I had a chance to exercise my inventive faculty again; and what he did not know about Virginia and the temper of her people when I was through—well, it would not have filled Governor Thomas Jefferson’s library at Monticello, perhaps, but it would certainly have furnished matter for a goodish-sized volume in the same, I dare swear.