“I had gone inside after information concerning the roads——”
“Which he was getting from a bottle, sir.”
“If drinking from a bottle of necessity constitutes being a spy, I fear our camp is already a hotbed,” Washington somewhat sagely remarked, casting his eye around slyly at his officers and men. “Tell me,” he went on, with sudden sternness, looking Reilly through and through, as though to read his very thoughts, “is the charge true? Do you come from Howe?”
“The charge is not true, sir. I come from no one. I simply am making a tour of pleasure through this part of the country on my bicycle.”
“With the country swarming with the men from two hostile armies, any kind of a tour, save one of absolute necessity, seems ill-timed.”
“When I set out I knew nothing about any armies. The fact is, sir——” Reilly started to make an explanation, but he checked himself on realizing that the telling of any such improbable yarn would only increase the hazardousness of his position.
“Well?” Washington questioned, in a tone of growing suspicion.
“I certainly did not know that your army or any other army was quartered in this vicinity.” Reilly hesitated for lack of something further to say. “You see,” he finally added, prompted by a happy idea, “I rode my wheel from New York.”
“You may have come from New York, though it is hard to believe you came on that singular-looking machine so great a distance. Where is the horse which drew the vehicle?”
Reilly touched his bicycle. “This is the horse, sir, just as it is; the vehicle,” he said.