A DARE-DEVIL DEED.
"Thou fool, to thrust thy head into a noose."
--ANON.
The girl was leaning back with her hand over her eyes, evidently in deep thought.
"Ah, Captain," she said, as Richard paused, mistaking him for one of Mistress Hamlin"s party from across the pavilion, "you have come to bear me company in Major Grant"s absence?"
"With your permission," answered Richard, gallantly, "and if Providence is kind to me, General Howe will find much to say to him."
"That is not likely, since the plans are all laid."
"Yes; they were not long in the forming," he ventured cautiously. "The division marches to-night."
"So soon? I thought it was at ten in the morning?"
"No doubt, then, I was misinformed; I was not at the meeting with the couriers. If Major Grant said ten in the morning, then it must be so,"
he hastily corrected himself; but he had learned one needed item.
"I hoped it had been hurried up that it might the sooner be over."
"This French marquis is inclined to give us trouble and himself airs."
"Indeed, yes; but General Howe will have his revenge when, after this fight to-morrow, he sends the young upstart back to England in chains."
"That will he. It would be a glorious sight to see our gallant general capture him with his own hands."
"Oh, Major Grant will attend to that," she replied loftily. "General Howe will do his share when he receives the prisoners at Chestnut Hill."
So Chestnut Hill road was to be their route. Richard mentally recorded it, while he said with incisive compliment, "Major Grant has the place of honour."
The pleasure in her voice when she answered told that the arrow had hit its mark. "Major Grant could have circ.u.mvented the rebels with half the five thousand men a.s.signed to him."
"He takes so many? "Tis a large force for so skilful an officer, unless, indeed, the enemy should be very strong."
"Oh, I think they reach not half that number."
With the hour of starting, the route and the force to be sent, Richard now knew all he had hoped to learn. Grant might return any moment, so that his peril was imminent; and yet the audacity of the adventure gave it such spice that he lingered unwilling, as he was unable to frame an excuse for withdrawing, filling in the pause with comments on the day"s festivities.
"Your company does not go with the attacking party?" she said presently, as though it were something they both knew positively.
"No," he replied, catching the cue, but wondering which company was supposedly his, and for whom had she taken him.
"Major Grant told me you would go as the general"s escort to receive and guard the prisoners."
"That sounds very tame after his own share in the work. Major Grant was surely born under a lucky star, to be so favoured as he is by Mars and the little blind G.o.d of love." There was a tone in his voice that she could not fail to understand, and she laughed coyly in answer. He ought to go, he knew; but still he lingered, and presently, urged on by the spirit of recklessness that possessed him, he said: "You have relatives in the south, Mistress Singleton?"
"Yes. How did you happen to know?" She turned toward him so abruptly that he was for a moment disconcerted.
"Why, it is not a government secret," he said, laughing.
"But you are not from the south; you are English. How should you know, and why should you think of it just at this time?"
She had scarcely looked at him before, being too busy watching the door of the banquet-hall for Grant"s return; but she had now lifted her eyes directly to his face. Discovery seemed imminent. Cursing himself inwardly, he hastily put up his hand to smother a pretended cough, thankful that the light was behind him. But her scrutiny continued.
"Captain Barry--" she said, with that in her voice that told him she was not quite satisfied.
"At your service--would that I could say forever," he said, putting all the tenderness possible in his voice, and clicking his heels in a low salute. Was everything over with him? Fool that he was to have tempted fate by such an allusion.
She pushed her chair back as though to rise, but at this moment there was a stir about the lighted doorway across the sward, and Grant came out. If he reached the pavilion before Richard found an excuse to retire his neck would pay the forfeit of his daring. He was thinking hard and fast. The girl sank back with a sigh of pleasure, her doubt of her companion momentarily forgotten in the joy of her lover"s return.
"Your superior officer," she laughed softly and proudly.
"Yes," he replied, with that audacity which, even in danger, could not be quelled; "my superior in the ways of wooing as well as in the ways of war, since against him I have no chance to win a smile from your lips.
You will have much to say to him in these last moments--and Mistress Hamlin is going," he added with a quick throb of grat.i.tude as the party across the pavilion left their seats.
"You need not leave us," she said with half-hearted politeness; but already Grant was at the foot of the steps, and, with an audacious kiss upon the hand she held out to him, Richard turned, and, with a beating heart but no seeming haste, fell into the rear of the company across the pavilion, descending the steps so close behind them as to seem to an onlooker to be a member of the party. Every moment was precious to him, and yet he loitered along the lighted sward as if eternity were his. As he reached the corner of the building he heard Grant call:--
"Barry, Barry!"
But he pretended not to hear, and sauntered on into the shadow. There his pace quickened. No one stopped him, for his military cloak completely disguised him, and presently he found himself near the landing. In an empty boat-house he cast aside his borrowed garment, and soon found Dunn near the barge at the appointed place of meeting. The old scout listened to his adventure with amazement not unmixed with anger.
"You confounded dare-devil, you might have spoiled the whole plan," he cried; yet acknowledging inwardly that he knew no one else who would have dared to thrust his neck so far into a noose. He himself had not been idle, and piecing together their bits of information, they made out that La Fayette had crossed the Schuylkill and taken a post of observation on a range of k.n.o.bs known as Barren Hill, and that Howe"s plan was to capture him as a brilliant close to a campaign that had been so much criticised. It became therefore instantly necessary to warn the marquis of the plot. The details Richard had gotten from the unsuspecting girl gave them all they needed to round out their plan; the one thing now was to escape and carry the information to La Fayette.
This Richard found more difficult than he had imagined from their easy entrance; for they had no friendly carter and market-maid beside them, and despite the festivity, the pickets were keeping strict watch at the outposts. Finally, by creeping on their hands for half a mile behind a hedge, they managed to evade detection; but the sun was already high over the eastern horizon before they gained the banks of the Schuylkill.
Keeping close to the stream and avoiding the open road, they finally came upon a row-boat hidden among the reeds in a cove. This, without ceremony, they appropriated, and were soon making more rapid progress on their journey. For a long while nothing but the oars was heard; then suddenly Richard laughed aloud.
"Suppose that young gallant had come back for his cloak while I was talking with the girl?"
"You"d have had to content yourself with the angels--or the imps--hereafter," growled Dunn.
But Richard laughed again. "Well, I"m glad he stayed away, for "tis pleasanter entertaining beautiful girls. It will be great sport to say in my home letters that I, a private in the Continental army, was one of Mistress Singleton"s attendants at General Howe"s _fete_! Mary will get it all from Joscelyn and write it back to the lady, and she will then know who the supposed Barry was. Who is Barry, anyhow?"
"One of the finest of the young officers that wears the red--a soldier and a lady-killer, so they tell me." Long afterward Richard recalled the words.
Presently Dunn, who had been looking intently ahead, said: "This is the place; yonder are the two dead oaks by which I always locate Matson"s ford. We will tie up here and cut across country to the hills, trusting to luck to find the way to La Fayette. Grant"s guides, knowing their road, give him the advantage, for I have never been sent to this part of the country, so am ignorant of my bearings. It must be near to noon, and the British column has long ago started."
"Will they guard this ford, do you think?"
"Hardly, for it is nearer to the English than to us. La Fayette will retreat as he came, by the one higher up."
"Will he fight first?"
"He may be forced to; otherwise, no. It would be folly to deliberately engage the superior force sent against him. If we only knew the direct path!"
"If we only had some breakfast," sighed Richard.
They wanted to ask their way at the scattered cottages and of the men at work in the fields, but they knew not friends from foes. Once they lay for an hour under a plum thicket, not venturing to move, while two men, who had met in the road, stopped their horses for a talk. The afternoon was beginning to wane when they came to a secluded farmhouse where an old woman gave them something to eat, and, thinking they were Tories, warned them that a body of Americans was said to be camped three miles to the southwest. They thanked her, but once out of her sight they turned joyfully in the forbidden direction, and in less than an hour were called to halt by two men with bayonets.