"How? I do not understand," I said, still in a maze.
"Perhaps you would know me better if I were to put on a red wig," he said. "Do not think, Lieutenant Chester, that you and Lieutenant Marcel are the only personages endowed with a double identity."
I looked at him closely, and I began to have some glimmering of the truth.
"Yes," he said, when he saw the light of recognition beginning to appear upon my face, "I am Waters. Strange what a difference a red wig makes in one's appearance. But I have tried to serve you and your friend well, and I hope I have atoned for my rudeness in putting you and Lieutenant Marcel to such hurry when I first saw you. It is true that I have had a little sport with you. I thought that you deserved it for your rashness, but I have not neglected your interests. I warned Alloway in the jail not to know you, and I helped him to escape. I learned about you from Pritchard, but no one else knows. I bound you, too, in Sir William Howe's room, but I leave it to you yourself that it was necessary."
His quiet laugh was full of good nature, though there was in it a slight tinge of pardonable vanity. Evidently this was a man much superior to the ordinary partisan chieftain.
"Then you too have placed your neck in the noose?" I said.
"Often," he replied. "And I have never yet failed to withdraw it with ease."
"I have withdrawn mine," I said, "and it shall remain withdrawn."
"Not so," he replied. "Miss Desmond must return to her father and Philadelphia. It is not fit that she should go alone, and no one but you can accompany her."