“I felt sure that you knew who Herbert was,” she said, very low, “and that you should be the one to hunt him down seemed unnatural.”
He did not reply; and side by side they stood by the fire watching it curl and roar in the wind. Then she said: “A few moments ago I heard you say that Major Hyde was a British spy. Was that true?”
“It was. I had it from his own lips this very night.” Again he looked at her in the same steady way; then he added: “Some curious things have happened and some equally curious misunderstandings have sprung up since that morning on the wharf near the ‘Brigantine.’”
“I have begun to fear so,” she said.
“Even at the first,” he said, “I could have explained some of them. But you would not allow me. Now, however, I can explain all.”
“I ask your pardon for anything which I have done or said amiss.” She spoke gently. “If you are ready to tell me these things, I am more than ready to listen.”
And so there, on the bleak hillside, with the snow falling and the bitter wind shrieking about them, he began his tale. Dana’s mistake; his own selection by Putnam to trace out the conspirators; Hyde’s plot to have his life because he thought him a false agent to the Tory cause. And here the girl interrupted him for the first time.
“That, then, is what Major Hyde meant when he spoke one night with Captain Henderson at my uncle’s house in Crown Street. He was plotting your destruction. He said you were as false to them. I thought he spoke as an American officer. That is why I warned you against coming into the city upon the night that you rescued my brother and myself at the ‘Wheat Sheaf.’ I felt sure that you had betrayed the American cause.”
Then George proceeded with his narrative. He told how he had given up the mission because of his relationship to them, and how he had plainly told General Putnam why. Then he watched the joy in her face as he related what he had heard Herbert tell his uncle.
“Then my brother is not a renegade!” she cried, with shining eyes.