We went down the slope behind the trenches and out to the stone fort, perched on its high point above the black void of the lake. Soldiers with lanterns stood guard outside: within the fort, lighted windows fronted on the drillground. We halted before the very room in which Gates had capered before us like a sly old woman, nine months before, when he learned from Wilkinson how Whitcomb had captured two Britishers. It was like old days when the door across the hall flew open; for there stood Wilkinson himself, his jaw-bones a-throb, as if he privily chewed some small and savory morsel.

“Where’s the general?” Whitcomb asked.

“Perhaps,” Wilkinson said in that soothing voice of his, “perhaps I can attend to this for you. The general hasn’t had much rest since he sent his little boy to Albany last Sunday.”

“You mean he’s gone to bed?” Cap Huff asked.

Wilkinson looked hostile. “That, sir, was the implication I intended to convey.”

“Well, get him up,” Cap said. “Look here, what we got!” He gestured largely toward us. Wilkinson stalked to the general’s door with his peculiar careful gait. He tapped on the door with an air of secrecy, listened a moment, and went in. We heard him knocking at another inner door.

“What’s this place Wilkinson lives in?” Cap asked hoarsely. “I ain’t never seen it.” He dodged into the room from which Wilkinson had emerged and was back in a moment, looking innocent.

“His little boy?” I whispered to Cap. “What was his little boy doing here?”

“Well,” Cap said, “the general claimed to have brought him up here so to give him a nice education, but he sent him away as soon as things began to get instructive.”

I pondered his reply. “If he sent him away,” I said, “he must expect the fort to be captured.”

I construed Cap’s silence as a hint to keep my thoughts to myself.

St. Clair came out to see us at once, half dressed. He was a moonfaced man with a strong English accent, and a look of having all his life worn a collar a little too chokingly tight for him.

I wish to say here that I think an injustice has been done Arthur St. Clair in calling him a coward. He was no coward, nor was he a bad general, either, as generals go. Yet there was no more drive and inspiration to him than to a barrel of pork. I had seen ship captains like him, and usually they were troubled with mutinies because of the frequency with which boatswains, third mates and even ships’ cooks considered themselves—occasionally with reason—more competent to do the sailing.