I said I would be blithe to go; which was both false and true. I thought it hard that I should have to show myself as a Virginia Page in public places wearing the feathers of a carrion bird. But on the other hand, I was ready to bind myself to Sir Iscariot by every tie that offered itself.
So, when he had buttoned himself into a great watchcoat, thrusting, as I observed, a pair of short, thick-barreled dueling pistols into the outer pockets, we took the stair for it, and so came down to the steps where the crusty soldier stood at attention and saluted as we passed him.
Before we had gone many steps in the street I thought I heard this soldier’s footfalls, or another’s, close behind. Thinking it was a good time to show my bodyguard watchfulness with little hurt to anybody, I said, “One moment, General,” clapped hand to sword-hilt, and made as if I would face about and charge the man who was following us. But Arnold restrained me.
“No, not this time, Captain,” he said lightly. “It is only our door-keeping sentry, and he has orders to keep in touch with us. The streets are dark, and if there should be an attack, three of us might be none too many.”
Having the information that I wanted, I caught the step again, and when we had gone a little farther on our way, I made bold to ask who our soldier-follower was.
“You should know him, as I take it, Captain Page,” was the calm reply. “It is Sergeant Champe, late of the rebel Henry Lee’s Light Dragoons.”
V
A KISS AND A MAN’S LIFE
OUR walking route, Arnold’s and mine, lay over the ground we had covered together in the forenoon, and was of an equal length. But with my brain afire with the possibilities suddenly opened up by the knowledge that Champe was only a step or two behind us—that we two, bent upon the same object, had the traitor practically in our hands—the distance we traversed was all too short to let me invent a way to take advantage of the Heaven-sent opportunity.
Now came the time when I bitterly regretted the headlong rashness that had led me to put the cart before the horse in all the day’s work. It was clear now that Champe was the only building basis for any rational plot to take the traitor; he it was who was in communication with Major Lee, without whose timely cooperation in providing means of escape for us from the town our mere seizing of Arnold would be but a flash in the pan. My first and biggest care should have been to make myself known in my true character to Champe; and a sharp attack of self-abasement followed the reflection that it might easily have been done at our breakfast-table meeting. A nod, a hint, a wink—any signal that might have given him a clue, would have sufficed. And I had tossed the chance aside like a spendthrift, telling myself that the day was yet young!
Now, however, as we strode along through the ill-lighted streets, the laggard afterwit spared me no stab. Somewhere in the darkness behind us—never near enough for me to signal to—tramped the sullen-faced sergeant-major, ready enough to get into action, no doubt, but firmly convinced that he was following two traitors instead of one. For all I knew, the time might be fully ripe for the striking of the blow. The difficulties hitherto, as Mr. Hamilton had explained them, had turned upon successive failures in fitting together simultaneously the two halves of the plot, Champe’s and Major Lee’s. What if the tangle had been straightened out and got into working order in the one-day interval, and I was merely obstructing instead of helping?