Chapter IX: The Incidents of a Snowy Night

There was a moment's pause, while Dick hastily tore open the silken bag in his queue and took therefrom the miniature. Then he advanced to her, bowing low, his hunting-cap in one hand, the portrait held out in the other. She glanced at the miniature curiously, then uttered a low exclamation of pleasure, her face suddenly assuming a faint but joyous smile, and took the portrait, her fingers touching his as she did so.

"When I said I would get it back for you, in New Jersey," quoth Dick, while she looked affectionately at the miniature, "I didn't think to take so long a time."

She now looked from the portrait to him. "Then you are the young gentleman who left the stage-coach, to go after the robbers?" she said, in a tone showing that she had not recognized him at first.

Dick bowed. "I would have returned it to you in New York, but--something hindered me." In contemplating the fine lines of her face, and the dark lustre of her eyes, Dick heeded not the possibility that his seekers might even now be on the porch.

"How can I thank you, sir?" she said, her look and tone having, from the circumstances, a tenderness such as she had not before evinced to any man. Perhaps this very exception in Dick's favor, though due to the occasion, separated him at once and forever in her mind from all other men, and made it natural that he, on whom she had scarcely even looked, should acquire in an instant a first place in her thoughts.

Dick had read enough to be able to make such fine speeches as were seriously affected and seriously taken in those days. He answered:

"By permitting me to worship you."

She looked at him a moment, at loss for a reply, but not disapprovingly. Before she could speak, there came a loud pounding at the rear door. The old servant, who had locked it after Dick's entrance, now returned to it to open it again.

"I think that is a party of troops in search of me," said Dick, quietly, to Catherine. "I came to Quebec on a secret mission for the United Colonies, and I have been discovered."

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed Catherine, suddenly showing deep concern. "Don't open the door, Antoine! Do you mean, sir," turning to Dick, "that, if you were caught, you would be--"

"Hanged, probably," said Dick, seeing out of the corner of his eye that the servant had stepped aside from the door without unlocking it.

The knock was repeated, more loudly. Catherine looked distressed and perplexed.

"They will be let in, eventually," she said, in a whisper, "for my uncle will hear them, and come to see what is the matter. You must hide till they go!"

"They will search the house," replied Dick.

She stood thinking, for a few seconds. "There is one room they shall not enter," she said. "Come!"

She went swiftly up the wide staircase, Dick following at her elbow. At the first landing, which was visible from the front part of the hall, she pushed back a door, whereupon Dick, obeying her look, stepped into a chamber that had a window at the farther end, as could be known by the faint whiteness there, and by the sound of snowflakes pelting the panes. Dick stopped at the threshold to say, "But the servant?"

"He is faithful to me," she whispered from the landing. At that moment the knocking again sounded, this time with angry violence. There came from the parlor a young gentleman whom Dick, looking through the chamber doorway and down the first flight of stairs, recognized as Catherine's brother, and who said to the servant:

"What is that knocking, Antoine? My uncle wonders why you don't go to the door."

"I have been busy elsewhere, Monsieur Gerard," said the old servant; and then he could be heard turning the lock.

A moment later there came the sound of men rushing in, and then the voice of Lieutenant Blagdon, saying, loudly and angrily:

"What the devil has come over this house, Gerard, that it opens so easily to rebel spies, and stays closed all night against the King's troops?"

Before the astonished Gerard could reply, another gentleman appeared from the parlor, attracted by the noisy arrival of Blagdon and the troops. He appeared to be about sixty, but he carried his tall figure stiffly erect, and his eyes were bright and keen. He held a hand of playing cards, and his face still wore a smile, which was rather that of heartless gaiety than of kindly merriment. Behind him, in the doorway, appeared other gentlemen and a few ladies, these last standing on their toes to see what was the disturbance.

"What is going on, Lieutenant Blagdon?" demanded the old gentleman.

"A very remarkable thing, Monsieur de St. Valier," replied Blagdon. "A rebel spy, who was discovered at Colonel Maclean's quarters, seems to have found a refuge in your house."

"What!" cried the old gentleman, whom Dick now understood to be Catherine's uncle. "My house shelter a rebel! You seem to be walking in your sleep, Lieutenant Blagdon, under the delusion of some ridiculous dream!"

"I implied no knowledge on your part, Monsieur de St. Valier, when I said the fellow had got into your house. We followed his track in the snow, and though we lost it for a moment in a crowd, before the wine shop yonder, we soon came on the same footprint, which led through the snow to your porch. The same feet left marks of snow on the porch, to your very door, and there are no marks leading away from it. Moreover, I know the man, and have reason to think he would have come to this house while in Quebec."

At this point Catherine hastened down the stairs, at first nonchalantly, but, on approaching the foot, assuming a look of wonderment at the scene in the hall.

"Why, what has happened, Gerard? What is it, uncle?" she asked.

"And now," cried Blagdon, excitedly, "I know the man has been here since I left Miss de St. Valier an hour ago!" Catherine saw, as did her brother, that Blagdon's eyes were fixed balefully on the miniature, which she had thoughtlessly retained in her hand.

"What man?" queried Catherine, turning red.

"The man who brought you back that portrait, which you didn't have an hour ago," cried Blagdon, half mad with jealousy. "Sure proof the man must have entered this house since he left Colonel Maclean's quarters, where he had been all day!"

"You are wrong, Lieutenant Blagdon," said Catherine, quietly. "Though you didn't know it an hour ago, I have had my mother's portrait since yesterday, as I meant to tell my uncle when I should see fit. It was handed to Gerard in the street by a man who did not wait for any words,--is it not so, Gerard?"

Dick, looking down from the darkness of the landing, saw Gerard bow in confirmation, and knew that the understanding between brother and sister was complete. He saw, also, Blagdon shake his head, with a derisively incredulous laugh.

"If any one came in by that door," said the elder St. Valier, "the servant should know it. You were here, Antoine. Did you admit any one?"

"Lieutenant Blagdon and the soldiers," replied Antoine.

"But Antoine could not have been minding his business," said Blagdon, "for we had to knock several times before he let us in."

"But," put in Antoine, "the door was locked before I admitted monsieur and the troops. Monsieur must have heard me unlock it. Does not that show that no one could have come in before monsieur, even if I were not at my place?"

"It shows merely that the man, after coming in, himself locked the door," said Blagdon. "He doubtless found it unlocked when he arrived. I'll wager Antoine will not take oath the door was locked at the time the man must have entered."

"Well, well," said Monsieur de St. Valier, "the question can be easily settled. I certainly don't wish to have a rebel spy lodged in my house. Let your troops search the place, lieutenant!"

"Thank you, monsieur," said Blagdon, his eyes flashing triumph; while Dick stepped back into the chamber from his doorway at the landing. Dick dared not close the door after him, lest its creak or the noise of its latch might attract the attention of the people in the hallway below. Dick had seen that some of these guests were British officers, availing themselves of a brief relief from duty.

"Neither Lieutenant Blagdon nor any other man shall search _my_ chamber!" said Catherine, with a pretence of that capricious determination which a woman may show without visible reason and yet not excite suspicion. She ascended the short flight of stairs with dignity, and stood on the landing, her back to the door. She had the superior sense to leave the door ajar, so that her action seemed the result, not of solicitude regarding some person in the chamber, but of a whimsical antagonism aroused by the manner in which Blagdon had spoken to her.

Blagdon gave some instructions, in a low voice, to an under officer. The latter, whom Antoine accompanied in obedience to a gesture from Monsieur de St. Valier, led four men into the rooms opening on the hall, while Blagdon and two of the troops remained where they were, as a guard to the great doors at the hall's either end. The searching party next went below stairs. During these operations Monsieur de St. Valier laughed and chatted with his guests, who stood grouped at either side of the parlor doorway, while Gerard remained at the stair-foot, apart from the others, watching his sister and listening for any sign from the searching troops. These presently came empty-handed from the lower regions, and hurried up-stairs, passing Catherine and her doorway as they went. After several minutes they returned, disappointed of their prey. Every room but Catherine's had now been looked through, the searchers having doubtless been ordered by Blagdon to leave that one exempt. He had probably hoped that the fugitive might be found elsewhere, and that his own duty and inclination might thus be fulfilled without further direct conflict with Catherine. He now braced himself for such contest,--a contest doubly difficult from the fact that he was in love with her and desired her love in return.

"Search that room!" he commanded the under officer, indicating Catherine's.

Dick, in the darkness beyond the threshold, ran to the window at the chamber's further end, and tried to open it; but it would not yield to his strongest pressure. Not able in the darkness to learn how it was fastened, he despaired of finding exit by means of it. So he returned to his place near the open door, outside of which stood Catherine, who dared not communicate with him in the gaze of the people below.

Meanwhile Catherine had capped Blagdon's order with the words:

"Whoever tries to enter this room must first deal with my brother and myself!"

"Right, sister!" cried Gerard, at the foot of the stairs. "He will have to pass over my body!"

Blagdon's men hesitated. Monsieur de St. Valier looked puzzled and annoyed. Little as he loved his niece and nephew, it would not do, before his guests, either to take a stand against Catherine or to risk the possible disclosure that she was really concealing a rebel in her chamber. So he remained silent and motionless, though manifestly ill at ease within. The guests waited curiously for developments.

"Miss de St. Valier betrays the truth," said Blagdon. "Her unwillingness to have the room examined shows that the man is there."

"Mlle. de St. Valier," replied Gerard, "is not accustomed to having her chamber invaded by men!"

"She has apparently made no difficulty of admitting to it the favored man!" cried Blagdon, in a voice evidently designed to be heard by Dick. The lieutenant had been suddenly inspired with the thought that such a spirited youth as Dick, being in love with the girl, would himself come forth to resent an insult offered her. Dick, indeed, now back from the window, heard the words, and, grasping his hunting-knife, would have bounded to the landing; but at that instant came Catherine's prompt reply, also uttered for his ears:

"If a man were there, Lieutenant Blagdon, he would be wiser than to be tricked out, for your purposes, by any insult of yours!"

Dick took the hint, and stayed where he was.

"He would not have to avenge the insult," cried Gerard. "That shall be my business. I look to you for reparation, Lieutenant Blagdon!"

"As you please," said Blagdon. "I shall have time presently. But now I am serving the King. The rebel, I perceive, is content to leave such matters to other hands. 'Tis what one might expect of a fellow that hides behind petticoats. But petticoats sha'n't protect him any longer. To that room, men,--"

But Catherine's voice rose louder than the lieutenant's, interrupting the order. "Why, lieutenant," she cried, with pretended irony, "if a spy were in the room, do you think he would not have escaped through the window by this time?"

Dick knew these words also were intended for him. She was not aware he had tried the window in vain. He held his knife the tighter, and awaited events.

"That was meant for his hearing!" cried Blagdon. "Saunders, take Jarvis and MacDonald outside and guard the window of that room. Make haste, or the rascal may drop from it before you get there." The subaltern and two men hurried out by the rear door. Blagdon, who now had four men left, cast a quick glance at the officers visible among the guests, to see if they were commenting on his previous negligence in not having placed guards outside before entering the house, a negligence due to his impatience and to his certainty that the fugitive was within. "Now, men, you first two seize any one who attempts to interfere, and you others follow me!"

He started for the stairs, but at the foot he encountered Gerard, who held the way so well for a few seconds, with body and both arms, that no one could pass him, the rear soldiers being obstructed by the scuffle between Gerard on one side and Blagdon and one of his men on the other. Catherine saw that this unequal contest must soon end in her brother's being thrown down or dragged aside. She shrank at the thought that, unless she could obtain other interposition, her own person would next have to serve as barrier, in which case Dick would certainly appear, for she had heard no sound of the window being opened.

"Gentlemen," she cried to the officers in the hallway, "you've heard Lieutenant Blagdon's accusation against me. Well, if you permit, he may enter my room to search, provided he enters alone."

"But I don't permit!" cried one of the officers, running to the side of the staircase, whence he stepped up to the outer end of a stair and then leaped with agility over the baluster, landing above the scrimmage at the foot. "By gad, I won't stand idly by and see such an indignity committed against a lady!" And he drew his sword, which, being in uniform and ready for any sudden call to duty, he wore.

"Nor I!" came from three or four more mouths, and in a few moments every officer present, having followed the leader's mode of passage, stood with drawn weapon on the stairs, between Catherine and Blagdon's party.

"I say, this is not fair play!" cried one of the officers, seeing Gerard at last held down on his back by two of the soldiers. Thereupon there was a swift charge of the officers down the stairs, each impelled to risk court martial by the desire to stand well in the esteem of a beautiful woman. Those were gallant days! Men were willing to chance anything for a grateful glance from a pair of lovely eyes,--that is to say, some men were,--and women were content to be the kind of women for whom men would take the chance.

The result of this movement was that Blagdon and his men were hurled backward to the front door, and Gerard, whom the officers leaped over in rescuing him, rose to a sitting posture and regained his breath. Blagdon stood defeated, at a loss. There came a knock on the front door. At St. Valier's gesture, Antoine opened it, and in walked Colonel Maclean and a member of his staff. The colonel, who had come on invitation, to join Monsieur de St. Valier's guests at dinner, looked around in surprise.

"Colonel," spoke up Blagdon, yet half breathless, "there is resistance here. The spy has been tracked to this house and to that room. These gentlemen have hindered me and my men from going to take him."

"We consider," explained one of the officers, "that Miss de St. Valier's chamber ought not to be entered without her consent, especially when she herself stands in the way, and when violence would have to be used against her in order to pass."

"Hoot toot!" said the colonel. "Do you mean that the young lady refuses, then? It must be because the matter was gone about in a way displeasing to the sex. I'm sure she won't object to my taking just a peep inside her nest, seeing how matters lie." Maclean did not use Scotch words save when speaking to Scotchmen. "I didn't notice the outside of this house guarded, when I came in," he added, turning to Blagdon.

"There are guards beneath the window of that room," replied the lieutenant, "where 'tis certain the man is hid."

"Well," said the colonel, half playfully, "to save the lady's proper feelings, which she has full right to indulge, I'll go alone into the room. You'll not mind the intrusion of a gray-headed colonel, who comes in the cause of the King and of Quebec, my dear young lady, I'm sure." And he started up the stairs.

"Will you not take my word, colonel?" asked Catherine, in a low, unsteady voice.

"Why, yes," he answered; "but, as a matter of form, duty requires I should take a glimpse. You there with the lantern, and the next man, follow me."

Maclean and the two soldiers chosen left all the others--St. Valier and his guests, Blagdon and the two remaining privates, Maclean's staff officer and Gerard--huddled well to the front of the hall, in that part whence they could see the landing before Catherine's door. Catherine suddenly disappeared into her room. "Go behind the door," she whispered to Dick as she passed him. He did so. Maclean entered the chamber, followed closely by his two men. By the light of the lantern, the colonel could see that Catherine was standing before a door that had the look of communicating with a closet in the side of the room. Her attitude and expression were of a desperate determination to protect that door from being entered.

"So that's where the spy is?" quoth Maclean, quickly. Dick saw the ruse, and stood ready to profit by the one chance it gave him against ten.

"For God's sake, colonel, don't open this door!" cried Catherine. "I give you my word, the spy is not behind it!"

"Madam, I must!" said Maclean, gravely. "Your own conduct shows you have some one concealed there. 'Tis your kind heart makes you wish to save the life of a hunted man, but perhaps many lives of loyal subjects depend on his capture. I beg you, stand aside, madam."

"I will not stand aside! While I have the strength, I will protect this door!" said Catherine.

Completely deceived by her solicitude over the door behind which Dick was not, the colonel, with as much gentleness as he could use, caught her in his arms and drew her from before that door, she resisting and protesting with the ejaculations, "For the sake of heaven! Take my word! There's no one there! Believe me! Don't open, I beg!" He then threw wide the door, and peered through the opening.

"Why!" he said, "there's a stairway here. Men, follow me down the steps!" He strode through the newly opened doorway, the two men at his heels. Catherine instantly flung the door shut upon them, and locked it.

"Across the landing," she whispered loudly to Dick; "window at the other side of the house--no guards there!"

"I love you!" he whispered back, having emerged from behind his door. "Shall we meet again?"

"God knows! Perhaps! Good night!" she said.

He seized her hand, in the darkness, and pressed it to his lips; then dashed through the doorway, across the landing, up the little flight of stairs at his left, into the first room ahead whose door he ran against, then to a window, which at once gave way to the force he brought to bear against it. He stepped out to the roof of the porch in front of the house, slid down a corner-post, ran through the yet open gateway to Palace Street, hastened leftward to the first intersecting street, and turned, again leftward, into that street, which led him towards the wall-crowned precipice that overlooked the St. Lawrence.

Meanwhile, the people in the hallway had caught the momentary view of his figure as it leaped across the landing, but they, in their ignorance of what had passed in Catherine's room, and in the unlikelihood of the fugitive's eluding Maclean without any outcry or pursuit on the latter's part, had supposed the flying apparition to be that of one of Maclean's men, despatched by the colonel on some business to them unknown. Dick had not remained a sufficient time in sight for his rifleman's attire to be distinguished in the half-darkness of the landing. So they waited for some appearance from Catherine's chamber.

Catherine remained standing in her room. Very soon a noise at its inner door told that Maclean had returned from his false quest, which had taken him only to an unused and bolted outer door originally designed to give a side entrance to the room, that apartment having been formerly devoted to the purposes of an office. She did not heed Maclean's efforts to open the door, which she had locked on her side. These efforts soon became extremely violent, and at last resulted in the breaking of the door, and in the appearance of the now irate colonel, followed by his men with the lantern.

"Why, miss," said he, "somebody locked that door behind me!"

"Yes," replied Catherine, lightly, affecting a triumphant smile of pleased revenge; "I did! You wouldn't take my word that nobody was behind it, and I thought I'd punish you!"

With which she left the room and went serenely down-stairs, followed by the somewhat mystified and crestfallen colonel, who had left his two men to make fast the broken door.

"The young lady was right. No one was there," said Maclean, gruffly, and went immediately to Monsieur de St. Valier, who gave a deep breath of relief and returned to the parlor, whither his guests accompanied him. Blagdon, to be at a distance from Catherine and Gerard, who stood talking together at the stair-foot, went with his two men to the rear of the hall, to wait for the two who had been up-stairs with Maclean. Thus it happened that, of the people in the hall who had seen the figure cross the landing, none but Gerard saw the two privates reappear presently from Catherine's room; and, as Blagdon was in no mood for questions when those two rejoined him, the impression was not corrected that the flying figure had been one of them. Blagdon forthwith led his four men, with the three who had been put on guard beneath the window, to the barracks, dismissed them, and repaired to a drinking-place. Catherine and Gerard went back to their uncle's guests; but the sister, bearing up against the exhaustion caused by the scene she had passed through, showed an abstraction not entirely to be attributed to happiness at the recovery of her mother's portrait.

Dick plodded on through the snow, past near and distant churches, monasteries, seminaries, gardens, fine houses, and mean houses, keeping a frequent lookout behind him, and up and down what streets he crossed, and came eventually to the low rampart near the grand battery, from which the precipice fell steeply to the narrow strip of the lower town that lay between the cliff's base and the St. Lawrence.

This rampart, which could avail mainly to shield the batteries that commanded the shipping in the St. Lawrence, was easy of ascent from the inside, as it could not be expected that any one would attempt leaving the upper town by the almost perpendicular precipice of more than two hundred feet. Yet such was the wild intention that Dick had formed. The attempt, on the part of a fugitive, seemed the more preposterous for the fact that, should he accomplish the almost impossible feat of safely descending the cliff, he would but find himself in the lower town, which was defended at either end and closely guarded along its river edge,--unless, indeed, he should traverse the face of the cliff diagonally, so as to arrive at the base outside the southern barrier of the lower town. As all the world knows, the walls of Quebec encircled the upper town on its high promontory, while the lower town, lying against that promontory's foot, needed no other defence on one side than the promontory itself. It was neither practicable nor necessary that a wall should run down the promontory's side; hence a man, finding himself on the steep declivity between the upper and the lower town, had a way of exit open to him, provided he could traverse obliquely the face of the cliff and could avoid observation from above or below. This way of escape recommended itself to Dick because the city gates would by this time be watched for him, and because it would bring him directly to the place where Arnold's man would be waiting to receive the report that was to have been brought by Mere Frappeur in her boat.

Dick knew the rampart overlooking the St. Lawrence would be the least guarded, as the British force was too small for the proper manning of the many and large defences. Slinking at a distance past the right flank of the grand battery, whose overworked sentries were shivering in the snow, he found a place where a platform enabled him to mount easily the rampart. Across this rampart he crawled, on hands and knees, making out through the falling flakes a single sentry who paced several rods away. Looking over the outer edge of the rampart, his head turned giddy, for a moment, at sight of the precipice falling sheer almost three hundred feet to the narrow fringe of houses and the gloomy river below.

But he chose a spot where there was ample footing at the rampart's base, turned about, backed from the rampart, hung for a moment by his fingers, and dropped to the chosen place, his fall softened by what snow had lodged there. He immediately turned his face towards his distant destination, and peered through the flake-filled darkness for what projections and indentations of the cliff might serve his progress. He thanked his stars for the evidence soon afforded him that his adopted mode of escape was within possibility, perilous though it might be; and then for the falling snow, which shielded him from sight, and for the snow already fallen, which now and then helped him to adhere to the cliff, for the irregularities of the precipice were such that the snow's lodgment had endured here and there on its steep face. These irregularities gave him footing, and so enabled him to proceed.

Many times he slipped, tearing his clothes and scraping his skin, but each time he kept his wits and availed himself of the first stopping-place that offered. The descent was a work of hours, so cautiously did he have to proceed, so carefully to pick out his next footing, so often to rest and regain his breath. At last he passed above the blockhouse and battery which together constituted the inner barrier of this end of the lower town. In the light from the blockhouse he could see a sentry pacing from the cliff's foot towards the wharf by the swift river.

Some minutes more of effort brought Dick past the top of a stockade, which formed the outer barrier. The exultation of success almost intoxicated him. He let himself slide down what remained of the cliff, heedless alike of the sharp projections and of the Canadian militia housed behind the stockade. As he stood, at last, in the narrow way between river and cliff, restraining an impulse to shout with glee, he took the two sheets of paper, containing his report, from beneath his hunting-shirt, and started forward, loudly whistling "Molly, my Treasure."

Suddenly, from over the top of the stockade, a shot was fired. Dick felt a sting, in the vicinity of the bayonet-wound received at Bunker Hill, and fell forward on his hands and knees. A gate in the stockade was thrown open, and two soldiers strode forth, lowering their faces to avoid the falling snow. At the same moment, a tall form sprang out from the shadow of a broken rock in front of Dick, completed the whistled passage of music suddenly cut off by Dick's fall, and said:

"Ye're nae woman in a boat, but ye're a braw whistler, and I'll tak' your papers!"

It was the man sent by Arnold,--old Tom MacAlister.

"Take them, Tom, and away with them quick, for God's sake!" cried Dick, handing them to him.

"But ye're hurt, lad!" cried Tom, thrusting the papers deep into an inner pocket.

"The devil I am!" lied Dick. "Only slipped on the snow. You save those papers, or all my work will go for naught! I'll get my wind and follow! Go, Tom! The papers first, don't you understand? I'll have my breath before those fellows can nab me!" And Dick raised one knee, as if already about to rise.

"Vera weel, lad!" said old Tom, compliantly, and plunged forward to round the point of Cape Diamond and follow the shore up the river. The sight of his gaunt figure, swiftly receding in the snow and night, between river and cliffs, was the last glimpse Dick had of Tom, the piper's son, for many a long day.

Dick was not entirely sure he might not indeed elude the two soldiers from the stockade, and overtake Tom. He got up and found he could proceed limpingly. But the soldiers, only a few yards from him when he rose, shortened the intervening distance so speedily that Dick saw they must catch him in a few seconds. He made to grasp his hunting-knife. It was gone, having been displaced from his belt at some contact with the cliff in his descent.

The idea of capture now became intolerable to him. A kind of madness arose in him, making him determined, at any cost, not to fall into the hands of the two enemies at his heels. When he felt himself almost within grasp of the foremost, he wheeled aside, and plunged head foremost into the swift, icy current of the St. Lawrence. While the water gurgled in his ears, he jubilantly pictured to himself the two men standing baffled on the shore and cursing the luck that had robbed them of their prey.

Soon rising to the surface, Dick struck out at random, using both arms and the unwounded leg. Whither would this swim in the dark lead him? He scarcely cared, now that he had accomplished his two missions; his one wish was that it should not diminish his triumph by delivering him up eventually to the foe. All at once something black loomed up before him,--a vessel whose lights he had not taken to be so near, and whose size he could not immediately make out.

As he turned to swim away from it, he heard a voice call out immediately over him, "Man in the river!" He pulled away, but with a constantly weakening stroke. He heard other cries, became vaguely aware that a boat was being sent after him, and presently, when strength and sense were about deserting him, he felt himself caught by the back of his hunting-shirt and drawn, by several hands, from the water to the boat.

He was too little conscious to answer the few questions that were asked him on the way back to the vessel. But as they landed him on the deck, he experienced a return of consciousness and of power to plan. He knew the vessel was a British one, but its people must be unacquainted with his face; hence he dared raise one last, desperate hope of completing his escape. As he stood on the deck, surrounded by the crew that had brought him from the water, he was approached by two officers, one of whom ordered him to stand forward, while the other remained a little aloof in dignified immovability.

"I beg you will put me ashore, sir," said Dick, somewhat excitedly, to the officer who had addressed him. "I had just left the stockade yonder, on a mission for Colonel Maclean. I fell in with a reconnoitring party of rebels, and escaped by taking to the river. May I be landed immediately on the other shore, to go on my mission without delay?"

"What papers have you, to show for this account of yourself?" demanded the officer, scrutinizing Dick.

"I had Colonel Maclean's pass in my hand when I was attacked," said Dick, with no outward falter; "but I must have let it go in the river. I had no other papers; the message I carry is a verbal one."

"A message? To whom?"

"To General Carleton," said Dick, on the moment's invention.

"Why, this is fortunate," said the officer, turning to the motionless gentleman. "General Carleton, this man says he has a verbal message for you."

Dick stood, for a moment, speechless and staring; then, yielding all at once to the fatigues of the night, sank in a senseless heap to the deck.