It was not a very social meal, that supper in Pettus’s hut before the cheerful open fire—fire being the one thing unstinted in that starving camp. My thoughts were busy with the meshings of the net into which I had stumbled; and as for Jack, I think he must have been eager to get me out of the way before Seytoun’s second should call. At any rate, it was he who reminded me of Melton’s hint that I would be expected at General Washington’s headquarters, and I do him no more than fair justice when I say that he sped the parting guest quite as heartily as he had welcomed the coming.
So it came about that it was still early when I set out in the starlight for the low tilt-eaved farm-house a half-mile farther up the road, passing on the way the field where poor Major André had paid his debt and where he now slept in his shallow grave; passing also, a scant hundred yards from the great chief’s headquarters, the fortress-like stone house where André had heard his sentence and spent his last night upon earth.
II
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT
I FOUND Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton waiting for me in that room of the De Windt house which served as an outer office in the commander-in-chief’s suite. It was my first visit to our army’s brain and nerve center since the execution of Major André, and I saw, in the posting of double sentries and by the many times I was halted before I could come to the door of Mr. Hamilton’s room, one of the consequences of Arnold’s treason. Our general was no longer free to go and come and be approached as simply as he had been in former times.
Mr. Hamilton’s greeting was as pleasant as Melton’s had been, though few ever saw him otherwise than cordial and suave. A slender fine-faced stripling, with the deep-welled eyes, short upper lip and sensitive mouth of his French mother, a man but little, if any, older than I, he had the manner of a true gentleman gently bred, and few as were his years, he carried a wise head on his shoulders.
“Good evening, Captain Page. Come in and stretch your legs before my fire,” he said; “you have the first requisite of a good soldier, Captain; you come promptly when you are called.”
At first I thought he was rebuking me gently because I had stopped to sup with Jack before reporting myself, but a quick glance at his smiling eyes showed me that I was wrong. Yet without that explanation I was left in the dark as to his meaning.
“A soldier’s call is apt to be an order, Mr. Hamilton,” I said, giving him the lead again.
“So was yours,” he announced. “But we scarcely looked for you to come before midnight, ride as you would.”
“I was sent for?” I asked.