And all the while, singing in my ears, I heard the meaning phrase he used at parting. Challenged? Not quite, but threatened with a challenge. The cards were mine to play--a pretty hand, with here and there a trump. Could I meet him and serve my country best? Aye, if I killed him. And, strangely, I never thought that he might kill me; I only weighed the chances. If I killed him he could not blab and danger me with hints of meddling or of rank disloyalty; but if I only maimed him he would never rest until suspicious eyes must make my mission useless. Suddenly I was aware that I had been a fool to anger him, if I wished to stay here in New York; nay, it was patent that unless I killed him he must one day work a mischief to our cause through me. A sneaking and unworthy happiness crept slowly over me, knowing that once my mission terminated here I was free to hoist true colors, free to bear arms, free to maintain openly the cause I had labored for so long in secret. No more mole's work a-burrowing into darkness for a scrap to stay my starving country's maw; no more slinking, listening, playing the stupid indifferent!
And all the while my conscience was at work, urging me to repair the damage my forgetful passion had wrought, urging me to heal the breach with Butler, using what skill I might command, so that I could stay here where his Excellency had set me, plying my abhorred trade in useful, unendurable obscurity.
It was a battle now 'twixt pride and conscience, 'twixt fierce desire and a loathed duty--doubly detested since I had spied a way to freedom and had half tasted a whiff of good free air, untainted by deception.
"O Lord!" I groaned within myself, "will no one set me free of this pit of intrigue and corruption in which I'm doomed to lurk? Must I, in loyalty to his Excellency, repair this fault--go patch up all with Butler, and deceive him so that his hawk's eyes and forked tongue may not set folk a-watching this house sidewise?"
But while Dennis's irons were in my hair I thought: "Nevertheless, I must send a belt to our allies, the Oneidas; and then I dare not stay! Oh, joy!"
But the joy was soon dashed. My belt must go first to Colonel Willett, and then to his Excellency, and it might be that he would judge it best to let the Oneidas fight their own battles and so decline to send my belt.