CHAPTER VII.
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 deepthought.
"Ah, Captain," she said, as Richard paused, mistaking him for one ofMistress Hamlin's party from across the pavilion, "you have come to bearme company in Major Grant's absence?"
"With your permission," answered Richard, gallantly, "and if Providenceis 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. "Thedivision 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 thecouriers. 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 thisfight 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 generalcapture him with his own hands."
"Oh, Major Grant will attend to that," she replied loftily. "GeneralHowe will do his share when he receives the prisoners at Chestnut Hill."
So Chestnut Hill road was to be their route. Richard mentally recordedit, while he said with incisive compliment, "Major Grant has the placeof honour."
The pleasure in her voice when she answered told that the arrow had hitits mark. "Major Grant could have circumvented the rebels with half thefive thousand men assigned 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, Richardnow knew all he had hoped to learn. Grant might return any moment, sothat his peril was imminent; and yet the audacity of the adventure gaveit such spice that he lingered unwilling, as he was unable to frame anexcuse for withdrawing, filling in the pause with comments on the day'sfestivities.
"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 wassupposedly his, and for whom had she taken him.
"Major Grant told me you would go as the general's escort to receive andguard the prisoners."
"That sounds very tame after his own share in the work. Major Grant wassurely born under a lucky star, to be so favoured as he is by Mars andthe little blind god of love." There was a tone in his voice that shecould not fail to understand, and she laughed coyly in answer. He oughtto go, he knew; but still he lingered, and presently, urged on by thespirit of recklessness that possessed him, he said: "You have relativesin the south, Mistress Singleton?"
"Yes. How did you happen to know?" She turned toward him so abruptlythat 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 doorof the banquet-hall for Grant's return; but she had now lifted her eyesdirectly to his face. Discovery seemed imminent. Cursing himselfinwardly, 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 wasnot quite satisfied.
"At your service--would that I could say forever," he said, putting allthe tenderness possible in his voice, and clicking his heels in a lowsalute. Was everything over with him? Fool that he was to have temptedfate by such an allusion.
She pushed her chair back as though to rise, but at this moment therewas a stir about the lighted doorway across the sward, and Grant cameout. If he reached the pavilion before Richard found an excuse to retirehis neck would pay the forfeit of his daring. He was thinking hard andfast. The girl sank back with a sigh of pleasure, her doubt of hercompanion 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 notbe quelled; "my superior in the ways of wooing as well as in the ways ofwar, 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 MistressHamlin is going," he added with a quick throb of gratitude as the partyacross the pavilion left their seats.
"You need not leave us," she said with half-hearted politeness; butalready Grant was at the foot of the steps, and, with an audacious kissupon the hand she held out to him, Richard turned, and, with a beatingheart but no seeming haste, fell into the rear of the company across thepavilion, descending the steps so close behind them as to seem to anonlooker 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. Ashe reached the corner of the building he heard Grant call:--
"Barry, Barry!"
But he pretended not to hear, and sauntered on into the shadow. Therehis pace quickened. No one stopped him, for his military cloakcompletely disguised him, and presently he found himself near thelanding. In an empty boat-house he cast aside his borrowed garment, andsoon found Dunn near the barge at the appointed place of meeting. Theold scout listened to his adventure with amazement not unmixed withanger.
"You confounded dare-devil, you might have spoiled the whole plan," hecried; yet acknowledging inwardly that he knew no one else who wouldhave dared to thrust his neck so far into a noose. He himself had notbeen idle, and piecing together their bits of information, they madeout that La Fayette had crossed the Schuylkill and taken a post ofobservation on a range of knobs known as Barren Hill, and that Howe'splan was to capture him as a brilliant close to a campaign that hadbeen so much criticised. It became therefore instantly necessary towarn the marquis of the plot. The details Richard had gotten from theunsuspecting girl gave them all they needed to round out their plan; theone thing now was to escape and carry the information to La Fayette.This Richard found more difficult than he had imagined from their easyentrance; for they had no friendly carter and market-maid beside them,and despite the festivity, the pickets were keeping strict watch at theoutposts. Finally, by creeping on their hands for half a mile behind ahedge, they managed to evade detection; but the sun was already highover the eastern horizon before they gained the banks of the Schuylkill.Keeping close to the stream and avoiding the open road, they finallycame upon a row-boat hidden among the reeds in a cove. This, withoutceremony, they appropriated, and were soon making more rapid progress ontheir journey. For a long while nothing but the oars was heard; thensuddenly Richard laughed aloud.
"Suppose that young gallant had come back for his cloak while I wastalking with the girl?"
"You'd have had to content yourself with the angels--or theimps--hereafter," growled Dunn.
But Richard laughed again. "Well, I'm glad he stayed away, for 'tispleasanter entertaining beautiful girls. It will be great sport to sayin my home letters that I, a private in the Continental army, was one ofMistress Singleton's attendants at General Howe's _fete_! Mary will getit all from Joscelyn and write it back to the lady, and she will thenknow who the supposed Barry was. Who is Barry, anyhow?"
"One of the finest of the young officers that wears the red--a soldierand a lady-killer, so they tell me." Long afterward Richard recalled thewords.
Presently Dunn, who had been looking intently ahead, said: "This is theplace; yonder are the two dead oaks by whic
h I always locate Matson'sford. We will tie up here and cut across country to the hills, trustingto luck to find the way to La Fayette. Grant's guides, knowing theirroad, give him the advantage, for I have never been sent to this part ofthe country, so am ignorant of my bearings. It must be near to noon, andthe 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 willretreat as he came, by the one higher up."
"Will he fight first?"
"He may be forced to; otherwise, no. It would be folly to deliberatelyengage the superior force sent against him. If we only knew the directpath!"
"If we only had some breakfast," sighed Richard.
They wanted to ask their way at the scattered cottages and of the men atwork in the fields, but they knew not friends from foes. Once they layfor 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 afternoonwas beginning to wane when they came to a secluded farmhouse where anold woman gave them something to eat, and, thinking they were Tories,warned them that a body of Americans was said to be camped three milesto the southwest. They thanked her, but once out of her sight theyturned joyfully in the forbidden direction, and in less than an hourwere called to halt by two men with bayonets.
"Take us to your general, and take us quick," said Dunn.
La Fayette recognized Dunn, instantly, and received his news with muchemotion, for he had hoped to strike a telling blow on some of theoutposts, and maybe cut off a foraging party, whose members would bevaluable prisoners for exchange. Now there was nothing but to turn back.But even as they were making ready for a retreat over the road by whichthey had come, his scouts came flying through the lines with the newsthat Grant was close upon them in the rear, having made a circuitousmarch in order to get between them and their camp at Valley Forge. LaFayette set his teeth as he said:--
"Then 'tis fight, though that means death to every brave man here."
But Dunn told of Matson's ford still unguarded, and the commander wasquick to seize the one chance left to save his men, and before midnightthe little band was safely over the river, with their faces towardValley Forge. There they were received with cheers by their comrades,who, having heard some wild rumours brought by two countrymen frombeyond the Schuylkill, had feared the worst for them.
That night, long after Richard was sleeping the sleep of healthy butexhausted youth, Dunn sat in the officers' quarters and told how, witha military rain-coat over his workman's blouse, Richard Clevering hadplayed the gallant to the beauty of Philadelphia and the _fiancee_ ofHowe's chief of staff.