"He has come straight from Major Ferguson, as I say; and, loyalist or rebel, he can find his way back to Gilbert Town."
"But you'll never be trusting him with despatches!" said Lord Rawdon.
"There is no need to trust him. He can be given the despatches with some hint of their purport, and of how much the king's cause will profit by their safe delivery."
Again a silence fell upon the group around the lawyers' table, and then some one—'twas Major Hanger, as I thought—said: "'Tis an unread riddle for me as yet, my Lord."
Cornwallis laughed. "Where are your wits this morning, gentlemen? If he be loyal and true, the despatches will go safe enough. If, on the other hand, he be a rebel and a spy, he will doubtless tamper with them; but in that case he will none the less ride straight enough to Major Ferguson's headquarters in the West."
"H'm; your Lordship is still too deep for me," said Tarleton's second in command. "If he be a rebel and a spy, why, in God's name, should he carry your Lordship's letters to any but some rag-tag colonel of his own kidney?"
My Lord laughed again. "Truly, Major, you should go to a dame's school and learn diplomacy. If we tell him beforehand what our object is, how could any rebel of them all defeat it more surely than by going to Ferguson with a garbled message that would make him stand and fight a losing battle?"
"But, my Lord—the risk!" cut in the commissary-general.
"There need be none. An hour after he sets out we shall send a mounted detail after him with an Indian tracker to nose out his trail. The lieutenant in command will carry duplicate despatches. At the worst, Ireton will guide these followers to Ferguson's rendezvous; and, so far as we know, he is the only man who knows exactly where to find the major."
I had heard enough. Under cover of the chorus of bravos raised by Lord Cornwallis's explication of his plot within a plot, I lifted the trap-door and made my exit as noiselessly as I had come.