For a moment the man looked into the boy’s face; and the boy returned the gaze steadily.
“Ah,” said Hawkins, at last, “so I see you here, Master Cooper.”
Ben nodded, smilingly.
“Are you surprised? Surely you knew that your plans at Rising Sun and at the Crossed Keys both failed.”
A sour smile crossed the man’s face, but his hard eyes did not smile.
“I don’t think I quite understand,” said he. “But, then, you are difficult to understand at best. However,” and there was a low menace in his tone, “I may come to understand you yet. And, mayhap, the understanding is not far away.”
Ben saluted smilingly, shook his rein and galloped away; but at some little distance he turned in his saddle and looked back. Hawkins had dismounted before General Lee’s tent and was at that moment upon the point of entering. At this the lad caught his breath sharply. The suspicions aroused by the words he had heard pass between Hawkins and Sugden at Claflin’s returned to him with a rush.
“What if, after all, it should be so?” was his thought.
“What if——” but here another thought occurred to him. “It makes no difference just now, at any rate,” he continued. “General Lafayette is to have command of the advance.”
He delivered Lee’s message at headquarters in all haste; but the delighted young Frenchman had scarcely rushed away to assume his post than a horseman dismounted before the tent of the commander-in-chief and was shown in. Ben was lingering about under instructions to wait, as there would probably be work for him; and he heard the rider announce: