“I’ve been thinking about those row-galleys,” he called. “They ought to be pierced for eight guns to a side, and carry eighty men. Give ’em stern and bow ports.”

I waved my hand to show I understood. The bateau grew small upon the hazy lake, and I had another question to ask myself.

There, moving irrevocably beyond my reach, was the means by which I could have sent Ellen safely on her way to Albany. Why hadn’t I asked Arnold to take her with him? Again I wasn’t sure of the answer.

… “Row-galleys to carry eighty men!” Nathaniel exclaimed when I returned to the tent. “I heard what he called out to you. What is it he aims to do?”

It came to my mind, suddenly, how I could make sure of pressing Nathaniel’s nose against the grindstone and keeping it there. “If we can build the proper ships, and build ’em quick enough,” I said, “it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Arnold went back and took St. John’s.”

“St. John’s?” Nathaniel asked. He swallowed. “St. John’s! How quick would we have to build ’em?”

“How quick could we build ’em? How quick could we build lateen-rigged row-galleys like those we saw in the Tagus on our voyage to Lisbon?”

Nathaniel turned and looked into the north, along the pale blue lake. “With any kind of carpenters,” he said, “I’ll bet it wouldn’t take a month to build enough row-galleys to knock St. John’s into a hoorah’s nest!”

I went through the tent to where Ellen Phipps still sat, busy with her knitting. This, I felt, was the proper time to find out what I wanted to know: whether her trip to Three Rivers, just after Sullivan reached St. John’s, had been due to her own wishes, or whether she had been sent by Marie de Sabrevois. If the latter was the case, then she—innocently, I was sure—had been the bearer of intelligence concerning the arrival of the new American regiments. At Three Rivers, I knew, she had stayed at a convent; so if she had unwittingly carried a message from her aunt, the mother superior would have passed the word along, just as Montgolfier disseminated information from the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Montreal.

While I stood looking down at Ellen’s chestnut curls, wondering how to begin, she said tranquilly: “I’ve been thinking, and I’d like to tell you what I think, because I don’t wish to think mistakenly. See if I’m right: From the time I first met you, you have now and then had a few thoughts about me, haven’t you? Were they kind ones?”