But General Washington, looking closely at us, said: "You do not appear to have slept well."
"Our time was so short that I thought we could not afford to waste any of it in sleep," I replied, with a sad attempt at a jest.
"General, kindly shoot us at once and have done with it!" exclaimed Marcel, who was ever an impatient man and now, expecting death, felt awe of nobody.
"Who said that I was going to have you shot?" asked General Washington, regarding us intently.
"Did you not tell us so yesterday?" I exclaimed.
"Not at all," he replied, his grim face relaxing. "I merely said that I would dispose of you to-day. I said nothing about shooting. That is an assumption of your own, although it is what you had a right to expect, and perhaps my words indicated such action. At any rate you seem to have had a fore-taste of what you expected."
The officers, all high in rank, our colonel among them, laughed aloud. At another time I would have been deeply mortified, but not now. I began to see. I understood that our punishment was not to be death; but we had already paid the price, the night's expectation of it.
"Fortune loves us," whispered Marcel to me.
"What did you say?" asked the commander-in-chief, seeing the motion of his lips.