“They told me nothing save that you were a soldier out of uniform, that you were a skulker from the fleet, and that you were making for a boat with a pair of oars on your shoulder—preparing to run away, they supposed.”
“They got it all straight, as far as they went,” he responded, nodding his head sagely. “Only they didn’t go half far enough. I was doing my prettiest to make a chance to put the quietus on a second man; and I would have compassed it within the next quarter-hour, if the guard officer hadn’t clapped his good eye on me.”
“Heavens!” I exclaimed. “You surely missed your calling, Sergeant Champe. You should be the public hangman in some county where the court sits once a month.”
Champe’s grin was appreciative rather than reproachful.
“They do say some callings run in the blood, Captain Dick,” he allowed. “My father was the High Sheriff of Loudoun County before the war took him off—as his gaffer was before him. But that’s neither here nor there: wait and you shall say for yourself whether this man I speak of does not need a little wholesome killing.”
“Go on,” said I. “The present moment is ours, and that is all the luckiest soul alive can lay claim to. None the less, if any special danger is threatening—”
“It is either past the threatening point, or else it will not reach it while I’m telling you,” said the sergeant, with a return of his stolid indifference. “If that cursed guard officer had given me but the thinnest shaving of time: five minutes more was all I asked.”
“Oh, get on with your story!” I cut in impatiently.
“I’m coming to it, Captain Dick; rein your nag down and go easy on the spur: then you’ll get all the speed with all the bottom. But, as I was saying: after I had found the only boat that was to be had on all this waste of river front, and had put the owner of it well choked and gagged and bound into the cellar of his own house, with half the bricks of his Dutch oven piled on the trap-door to keep him safe—”
“You said nothing of all this,” I interrupted, “but no matter—let’s have the nib of it.”