“So I will, then,” he agreed. After which he asked me if I would stay where I was and pray for his success.
“I’ll do better than that—being somewhat out of practice on my knees,” I told him. “It lies in my mind that I’ll go yonder to Sir Henry’s door and be at hand to stop our man if he should slip through your fingers and decide to ask an audience of Sir Henry Clinton without your help. Can you describe him so I would know him?”
“Why, yes,” said the sergeant, scratching his head with a meditative finger. “You’ll place him in the hollow half of a minute. He’s much like other men, neither very big nor very little; less tall than the tallest, and by no means as short as the shortest. You can’t well miss him.”
Sharp as our peril was, I had to laugh at Champe’s notion of a description. But time was pressing.
“Try it again, Sergeant,” I encouraged. “This time I’ll help you. Just answer my questions one at a time and we’ll have him. First, how old would you take him to be?”
Champe knitted his brows thoughtfully. “By grabs, Captain Dick, I never thought to ask him!”
“No, no; of course you couldn’t ask him. But fire a guess at it. Is he a young man?”
“No; I wouldn’t call him young; say thirty, or forty, or maybe fifty, or so.”
“Great Marlborough!” I raged. “Can’t you come any nearer to it than that? How about his eyes—what color are they?”
“Hum—his eyes; well, now, there you have me again, Captain. They are devilish sharp little eyes; I can tell you that. But lord! I couldn’t name you their color in a month of Sundays.”