“I see,” he said. “Your cousin must be a strange person. Do with what I have said as seems right to you. I shall be—or rather,” and he smiled quite cheerfully, “I am content. One’s grammar forgets to-morrow sometimes.”
His ease and quiet seemed to me amazing. But it was getting late, and I said I must go at once.
As I was in act to leave, he took my hand and said: “There are no thanks a man about to die can give that I do not offer you, Mr. Wynne. Be assured your visit has helped me. It is much to see the face of a friend. All men have been good to me and kind, and none more so than his Excellency. If to-morrow I could see, as I go to death, one face I have known in happier hours—it is much to ask—I may count on you, I am sure. Ah, I see I can! And my letter—you will be sure to do your best?”
“Yes,” I said, not trusting myself to speak further, and only adding, “Good-by,” as I wrung his hand. Then I went out into the cold October starlight.
It was long after ten when I found Hamilton. I told him briefly of my interview, and asked if it would be possible for me to deliver in person to the general Mr. Andre’s letter. I had, in fact, that on my mind which, if but a crude product of despair, I yet did wish to say where alone it might help or be considered.
Hamilton shook his head. “I have so troubled his Excellency as to this poor fellow that I fear I can do no more. Men who do not know my chief cannot imagine the distress of heart this business has caused. I do not mean, Wynne, that he has or had the least indecision concerning the sentence; but I can tell you this—the signature of approval of the court’s finding is tremulous and unlike his usual writing. We will talk of this again. Will you wait at my quarters? I will do my best for you.”
I said I would take a pipe and walk on the road at the foot of the slope below the house in which Washington resided. With this he left me.
The night was clear and beautiful; from the low hills far and near the camp bugle-calls and the sound of horses neighing filled the air. Uneasy and restless, I walked to and fro up and down the road below the little farm-house. Once or twice I fancied I saw the tall figure of the chief pass across the window-panes. A hundred yards away was the house I had just left. There sat a gallant gentleman awaiting death. Here, in the house above me, was he in whose hands lay his fate. I pitied him too, and wondered if in his place I could be sternly just. At my feet the little brook babbled in the night, while the camp noises slowly died away. Meantime, intent on my purpose, I tried to arrange in my mind what I would say or how plead a lost cause. I have often thus pre-arranged the mode of saying what some serious occasion made needful. I always get ready, but when the time comes I am apt to say things altogether different, and to find, too, that the wisdom of the minute is apt to be the better wisdom.
At last I saw Hamilton approaching me through the gloom. “Come,” he said. “His Excellency will see you, but I fear it will be of no use. He himself would agree to a change in the form of death, but Generals Greene and Sullivan are strongly of opinion that to do so in the present state of exasperation would be unwise and impolitic. I cannot say what I should do were I he. I am glad, Wynne, that it is not I who have to decide. I lose my sense of the equities of life in the face of so sad a business. At least I would give him a gentleman’s death. The generals who tried the case say that to condemn a man as a spy, and not at last to deal with him as Hale was dealt with, would be impolitic, and unfair to men who were as gallant as the poor fellow in yonder farm-house.”
“It is only too clear,” I said.