The general appeared not to have heard; the spy’s talk had merely turned his thoughts into an unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their will independently to conclusions of their own.  The storm had ceased, and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread.  Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it.  “I should not like to die,” he said—­“not to-night.”

He was interrupted—­if, indeed, he had intended to speak further—­by the entrance of an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, the provost-marshal.  This recalled him to himself; the absent look passed away from his face.

“Captain,” he said, acknowledging the officer’s salute, “this man is a Yankee spy captured inside our lines with incriminating papers on him.  He has confessed.  How is the weather?”

“The storm is over, sir, and the moon shining.”

“Good; take a file of men, conduct him at once to the parade ground, and shoot him.”

A sharp cry broke from the spy’s lips.  He threw himself forward, thrust out his neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands.

“Good God!” he cried hoarsely, almost inarticulately; “you do not mean that!  You forget—­I am not to die until morning.”

“I have said nothing of morning,” replied the general, coldly; “that was an assumption of your own.  You die now.”

“But, General, I beg—­I implore you to remember; I am to hang!  It will take some time to erect the gallows—­two hours—­an hour.  Spies are hanged; I have rights under military law.  For Heaven’s sake, General, consider how short—­”

“Captain, observe my directions.”

The officer drew his sword and fixing his eyes upon the prisoner pointed silently to the opening of the tent.  The prisoner hesitated; the officer grasped him by the collar and pushed him gently forward.  As he approached the tent pole the frantic man sprang to it and with cat-like agility seized the handle of the bowie-knife, plucked the weapon from the scabbard and thrusting the captain aside leaped upon the general with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling headlong upon him as he lay.  The table was overturned, the candle extinguished and they fought blindly in the darkness.  The provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his Superior officer and was himself prostrated upon the struggling forms.  Curses and inarticulate cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies; the tent came down upon them and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds the struggle went on.  Private Tassman, returning from his errand and dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle and laying hold of the flouncing canvas at random vainly tried to drag it off the men under it; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his rifle.