I looked up at the moon, and hoped to see the clouds gathering more thickly before her face. I had confirmed my resolution. If the chance came to me, I would steal away from the English and enter the valley beyond. I doubted not that I would find my own people there. I would warn them of the danger, and remain with them in the future, unless fate should decree that I become a prisoner.
But Dame Fortune was in no such willing humor. The clouds did not gather in quantities, and, besides, the English were numerous around me. Belfort himself sat on the grass only a few feet from me, and, with more friendliness than he had shown hitherto, undertook to talk to me in whispers.
"Do you know what we are going to do to-night, Melville?" he asked.
"It seems," I said, "that we are to sit here in the woods until morning, and then to be too hoarse with cold to talk."
Then I added, having the after-thought that I might secure some information from him,—
"I suppose we are after important game to-night. The size of our force and the care and secrecy of our movements indicate it, do they not?"
"There is no doubt of it," he replied, "and I hope we shall secure a royal revenge upon the rebels for that Wildfoot affair."
Our conversation was interrupted here by an order from the colonel for me to move farther towards the front, from which point I was to report to him at once anything unusual that I might see or hear. The men near me were common soldiers. They squatted against the trees with their muskets between their knees, and waited in what seemed to me to be a fair degree of content.
An hour, a very long hour, of such waiting passed, and the colonel approached me, asking if all was quiet. I supplemented my affirmative reply with some apparently innocent questions which I thought would draw from him the nature of his expectations. But he said nothing that satisfied me. As he was about to turn away, I thought I heard a movement in the woods in front of us. It was faint, but it resembled a footfall.