The long night dragged wearily on, every minute an hour. Once I laughed aloud in my bitterness, when I thought of Mary Desmond hearing the news of my death.
We slept by snatches, a few minutes at a time; but we were wide-eyed when the day came. I saw black lines under Marcel's eyes, and I knew that my own face was haggard too. The sentinel brought us breakfast; but did not retire as we ate, and when I looked at him inquiringly, he said,--
The food choked me, and I could eat no more. "Come," I said to Marcel, "let's get it over."
We arose, and, walking out at the door, met soldiers who fell in before and behind us. The camp, or at least nearly all of it, was yet slumbering. Only a few fires were burning. Over the forests and fields the new-risen sun shone with a clear light.
They marched us to a little grove, and there General Washington and a half-dozen officers, our colonel among them, met us.
"I think that he might have stayed away," said Marcel, when he saw the commander-in-chief.
But General Washington, looking closely at us, said: "You do not appear to have slept well."
"Our time was so short that I thought we could not afford to waste any of it in sleep," I replied, with a sad attempt at a jest.
"General, kindly shoot us at once and have done with it!" exclaimed Marcel, who was ever an impatient man and now, expecting death, felt awe of nobody.
"Who said that I was going to have you shot?" asked General Washington, regarding us intently.
"Did you not tell us so yesterday?" I exclaimed.
"Not at all," he replied, his grim face relaxing. "I merely said that I would dispose of you to-day. I said nothing about shooting. That is an assumption of your own, although it is what you had a right to expect, and perhaps my words indicated such action. At any rate you seem to have had a fore-taste of what you expected."
The officers, all high in rank, our colonel among them, laughed aloud. At another time I would have been deeply mortified, but not now. I began to see. I understood that our punishment was not to be death; but we had already paid the price, the night's expectation of it.
"Fortune loves us," whispered Marcel to me.
"What did you say?" asked the commander-in-chief, seeing the motion of his lips.