I had been suspicious of Marie de Sabrevois. I had thought her a spy in the interests of the British. Perhaps she was: I couldn’t tell. I had thought her a cold-hearted, calculating woman, although I had no inkling of the object of her calculations.

I had thought she wanted Nathaniel to be in love with her—possibly so that she might use him in the obtaining of information. But how could that be, when she had practically stepped aside to let Ellen be with Nathaniel? Perhaps, after all, Marie de Sabrevois was a noble and self-sacrificing woman. Perhaps she had seen that her ward was in love with Nathaniel; had placed Ellen’s and Nathaniel’s happiness above her own. Perhaps, as Madame St. Auge had said, she was indeed sick: sick from the shock of making a great sacrifice.

It was all too much for me, especially in my exhausted state.

Cap Huff put his ham of a hand on my shoulder. “Worry about me a while. Nathaniel’s had the big luck to get sent to Crown Point, all safe and nice, with as handsome a looking young lady as you’d care to see to play cards with him when he’s tired, or sing to him when he ain’t feeling well, just so’s he gets her safe to Crown Point, which is the same as walking up Dock Square with her on his arm, pretty near. While me, I’m left here among all this trouble and destruction and dissipation of a busted army, and can’t get away, and neither can you, nor any of these pore worthless fellers that’s standing around us, waiting to see you get hysterical with joy over Doc’s eel stew.”

He turned from me abruptly to resume his scrutiny of the ragged soldiers who shambled past in twos and threes. I sat on the ground. They brought me a bowl of eel stew. I drank it slowly, leaning back against some piled timber, and began to be conscious of returning sanity. Strangely enough, I was not so dead for sleep as I had been, and became curious about Cap.

“What’s he doing?” I asked. “Counting the soldiers as they go by?”

“He’s been watching this road ever since we got word Sullivan had started to retreat,” Tom explained. “He or one of the rest of us has stood right here, day and night, watching for Steven Nason and you. Cap was afraid one of you might have got took sick. He said he didn’t propose to have either of you rolled into one of the dead pits by mistake.”

“Whose men are these?”

“Arnold’s. They say he rushed ’em across the river and away, like ghosts, right under the noses of the British.”