Once free of the fort with my derelict, I hurried him around to the tavern and up to my room.
“Out of that masquerade and into your uniform quickly!” I commanded; and I would not let him tell his morning adventures until he had made the change.
When he was once more, in outward appearance, a soldier of the Loyal American Legion, he set his back against the wall and said:
“Well, Captain Dick, I’ve found the boat for us, though I don’t know but what I’ve had to kill a man to quiet our title to it.”
XII
HOW THE HOOK WAS BAITED
CHAMPE’S calm announcement that he had purchased a boat at the price of a man’s life was startling enough; but before I could ask for the particulars he had pushed the dreadful deed and all thought of it into the background with an ominous hint and a still more ominous query.
“The boat business isn’t the worst of it, by the value, much or little, of another man’s life,” he affirmed soberly. Then the query: “Is your standing still good over yonder, Captain Dick?” with a jerk of his thumb toward Sir Henry Clinton’s and Arnold’s headquarters.
“My standing was as sound as ever, up to an hour or two ago; though it had a pretty narrow margin when Major Simcoe came ashore and went within an ace of spilling all our fat into the fire. But why? Has anything happened that promises to make a breach in it?”
Champe took his back from the wall and sat down, locking his hands over one knee.
“Let me ask you first: did they tell you what I was doing when they put me under arrest?—but of course they didn’t; they couldn’t have guessed it.”