“Washington’s defeat,” repeated Hawkins; “ah, what a relief that was! It altered things all about me. Trenton and Princeton and the affairs in the Jerseys had set me a task that I sometimes despaired of, Sugden; but this one defeat brought all the complainings to the top again. The victories were forgotten; the commander had lost a battle, therefore the commander was incompetent.”
“A rare good general, this Washington, I think,” said Sugden. “A careful fighter and one that will last long—if they allow him?”
There was a laugh with this last, a mocking sort of laugh which indicated the speaker’s disbelief in the possibility.
“With the goodness or the badness of Mr. Washington as an officer, we personally have nothing to do,” said Hawkins. “We are paid to excite disbelief in him; our duty is to have him supplanted by a weaker man, so let us be about that, and bother with nothing else.”
Ben felt his heart throb heavily at this, and the blood beat about his temples and roared in his ears. Here at last was the thing which he had thought for so long, put plainly into words. There was a movement on foot to displace Washington as head of the army; fearing that its forces would not be equal to the task of subduing the aroused colonies, the British government had set about undermining the one man whose genius they feared in the field.
“A conspiracy,” breathed Ben. “A conspiracy conducted by this man Hawkins!”
Now better than ever did the lad understand the actions of Tobias Hawkins. As he thought over all the man’s doings and sayings he fancied that they all centered in the one purpose.
“On New Year’s Eve, when I first saw him, he was but newly come to Philadelphia to begin his plotting; and that faultfinding old fellow, Livingstone, was just the sort of man he needed to enable him to make a fair start; Hawkins knew that he was well connected, and much too stupid to ever suspect that he was being used.”
The conspirators’ eagerness that same night to learn from Mr. Morris the names of those persons who were not upon good terms officially with Washington once more returned to the boy.
“He has found out the greater part of them by now, I suppose,” thought Ben. “There is the adventurer Conway, the vain General Gates, and the rather calculating Mifflin; he keeps the company of all three, and each of them is an enemy of Washington.”