And the man himself, Falconer!  ’Twas he that commanded this night’s wild attempt, if she had spoken truly.  Well, Falconer should not succeed this night, and Philip, with a kind of bitter elation, thanked God ’twas through him that the attempt should be the more utterly defeated.  He patted his horse—­a faithful beast that had known but a short rest since it had travelled over the same road in the opposite direction—­and used all means to keep it at the best pace compatible with its endurance.  Forward it sped, in long, unvarying bounds, seeing the road in the dark, or rather in the strange dusky light yielded by the snow-covered earth and seeming rather to originate there than to be reflected from the impenetrable obscurity overhead.

From the attempt which he was bent upon turning into a ridiculous abortion, if it lay in the power of man and horse to do so, Philip’s thoughts went to the object of that attempt, Washington himself.  He was thrilled at once with a greater love and admiration for that firm soul maintaining always its serenity against the onslaughts of men and circumstance, that soul so unshakable as to seem in the care of Fate itself.  Capture Washington!  Philip laughed at the thought.

And yet a British troop had seized General Charles Lee when he was the rebels’ second in command, and, in turn, a party of Yankees had taken the British General Prescott from his quarters in Rhode Island.  True, neither of these officers was at the time of his seizure as safely quartered and well guarded as Washington was now; but, on the other hand, Margaret had spoken of treachery in the American camp.  Who were the traitors?  Philip hoped he might find out their chief, at least.

It was a long and hard ride, and more and more an up-hill one as it neared its end.  But Philip’s thoughts made him so often unconscious of his progress, and of the passage of the hours, that he finally realised with a momentary surprise that he had reached a fork of the road, near which he should come upon the rebel pickets, and that the night was far spent.  He might now take one road, and enter the camp at its nearest point, but at a point far from Washington’s headquarters; or he might take the other road and travel around part of the camp, so as to enter it at a place near the general’s house.  ’Twas at or near the latter place that the enemy would try to enter, as they would surely be so directed by the traitors within the camp.

Heedless of the apparent advantage of alarming the camp at the earliest possible moment, at whatever part of it he could then reach, he felt himself impelled to choose the second road.  He ever afterward held that his choice of this seemingly less preferable road was the result of a swift process of unconscious reasoning—­for he maintained that what we call intuition is but an instantaneous perception of facts and of their inevitable inferences, too rapid for the reflective part of the mind to record.