"If there is a time for it to-night," I said to Marcel, when the opportunity came for us to speak together in secrecy, "I shall leave these people with whom we have no business, and return to those to whom we belong."
"And I," said Marcel, with one of his provoking grins, "shall watch over you with paternal care, come what may."
The night was half day. A full silver moon turned the earth—forests, fields, and houses—into that peculiar shimmering gray color which makes one feel as if one were dwelling in a ghost-world that may dissolve into mist at any moment. Our long column was colored the same ghostly gray by the moon. There were no sounds, save the steady tramp of the men and the horses, and the occasional clank of the bayonets together.
I did not like this preternatural silence, this evidence of supreme caution. It warned me of danger to my countrymen, and again I wished in my soul that I knew what business we were about. But there was naught to do save to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.
We followed one of the main roads out of Philadelphia for some distance, and then turned into a narrower path, along which the detachment had much difficulty in preserving its formation. This part of the country was strange to me, and I did not believe that we were proceeding in the direction of the American encampment. Still, it was obvious that a heavy blow against the Americans was intended.
As the hours passed, clouds came before the moon, and the light waned. The long line of men ahead of me sank into the night so gradually that I could not tell where life ended and darkness began, and still there was no sound but the regular tread of man and beast and the clanking of arms. My sense of foreboding increased. How heartily I wished that I had never come into Philadelphia! I silently cursed Marcel for leading me into the adventure. Then I cursed myself for attempting to throw all the blame on Marcel.
The night was advancing, when we came to a long, narrow valley, thickly wooded at one end. We halted there, and the general selected about three hundred men and posted them in the woods at the head of the valley. I was among the number, but I observed with regret that Marcel was not. A colonel was placed in command. Then the main army followed a curving road up the hill-side and went out of sight over the heights. I watched them for some time before they disappeared, horse and foot, steadily tramping on, blended into a long, continuous, swaying mass by the gray moonlight; sometimes a moonbeam would tip the end of a bayonet with silver and gleam for a moment like a falling star. At last the column wound over the slope and left the night to us.
About one-third of our little force were cavalrymen; but, under the instructions of our colonel, we dismounted and gave our horses into the care of a few troopers; then all of us moved into the thick woods at the head of the pass, and sat down there, with orders to keep as quiet as possible.
I soon saw that the rising ground and the woods which crowned it merely formed a break between the valley which we had entered at first and another valley beyond it. The latter we were now facing. I had not been a soldier for two years and more for nothing, and I guessed readily that we were to keep this pass clear, while the main force was to perform the more important operation, which I now doubted not was to be the entrapping of some large body of Americans. Perhaps in this number was to be included the general-in-chief himself, the heart and soul of our cause. I shuddered at the thought, and again cursed the reckless spirit that had placed me in such a position.
At first we had the second valley in view; but our colonel, fearing that we might expose ourselves, drew us farther back into the woods, and then we could see nothing but the trees and the dim forms of each other.