“Well, let us be serious, Will. I am in no humor for sport now. Do not keep me in suspense. What have you come for?”
“Didn’t you say, just now, that God sent me? I wish I could think it. It would be a great relief to my conscience.”
“How is that?”
“Why, don’t you see, I’ve got to play false to my government and my country, if I give you freedom?”
“Is that painful to your conscience?”
“If I say yes, then you will become stubborn, and refuse to accept the boon of freedom. So, that you may have no scruples, I will tell you that I have a convenient conscience—one that will stretch. I never was raised, like you, a regular, old blue-stocking Presbyterian. Sometimes, though, I wish I had been. For there is no doubt in my mind that the Presbyterian is the most solid and substantial Church on earth.[2] My mother, you know, is a Presbyterian, and my father belongs to the —— Church. I notice that she is the firmer character, and I can say with truth, more consistent, religiously. I take after my father; and that, I guess, is a good thing for you.”
“Why is it?” asked Mildred.
“Why, don’t you see, if I were a rigid Presbyterian, I should hesitate about giving you liberty? I should be afraid of doing violence to my conscience. Waiving that, however, I think I have been a faithful servant of my government, and they might allow me to release one wretched prisoner.”
“Why could you not get a pardon for me, and thus save your conscience?” asked Mildred.
“How green you women are! Don’t you know there is no pardon for a spy? Don’t you remember Maj. Andre, of the Revolutionary war? Washington would not even let the poor fellow select his own mode of quitting ‘these low grounds of sorrow.’ The punishment for this great sin of espionage is death, and death by hanging.”