When we entered the warm tap-room of the tavern—­the house above Kingsbridge, outside the barriers where the passes were examined and the people searched who were allowed entrance and departure; not Hyatt’s tavern, South of the bridge—­we found a number of subalterns there, some German, some British, some half-drunk, some playing cards.  Our Irish surgeon sat in a corner, reading a book—­I think ’twas a Latin author—­by the light of a tallow candle.  He nodded to us indifferently, as if he had no engagement with us, and continued to read.  Tom and I ordered a hot rum punch mixed for us, and stood at the bar to drink it.

“You look pale and shaky, you two,” said the tavern-keeper, who himself waited upon us.

“’Tis the cold,” said I.  “We’re not all of your constitution, to walk around in shirt-sleeves this weather.”

“Why,” says the landlord, “I go by the almanac.  ’Tis time for the January thaw, ‘cordin’ to that.  Something afoot to-night, eh?  One o’ them little trips up the river, or out East Chester way, with De Lancey’s men, I reckon?”

We said nothing, but wisely looked significant, and the host grinned.

“More like ’tis a matter of wenches,” put in a half-drunken ensign standing beside us at the bar.  “That’s the only business to bring a gentleman out such a cursed night.  Damn such a vile country, cold as hell in winter, and hot as hell in summer!  Damn it and sink it! and fill up my glass, landlord.  Roast me dead if I stick my nose outdoors to-night!”

“A braw, fine nicht, the nicht, gentlemen,” said a sober, ruddy-faced Scot, very gravely, with a lofty contempt for the other’s remarks.  “Guid, hamelike weather.”

But the feelings and thoughts prevailing in the tap-room were not in tune with those agitating our hearts, and as soon as Captain Falconer and his friend came in, we took our leave, exchanging a purposely careless greeting with the newcomers.  We turned in silence from the road, crossed a little sparsely wooded hill, and arrived in the thicket-screened hollow.

’Twas in silence we had come.  I had felt there was much I would like, and ought, to say, but something in Tom’s mood or mine, or in the situation, benumbed my thoughts so they would not come forth, or jumbled them so I knew not where to begin.  Arrived upon the ground with a palpitating sense of the nearness of the event, we found ourselves still less fit for utterance of the things deepest in our minds.

“There’ll be some danger of slipping on the frozen snow,” said I, trying to assume a natural, even a cheerful, tone.

“’Tis an even danger to both of us,” said Tom, speaking quickly to maintain a steadiness of voice, as a drunken man walks fast to avoid a crookedness of gait.

While we were tramping about to keep warm, the Irish surgeon came to us through the bushes, vowing ’twas “the divvle’s own weather, shure enough, barrin’ the hivvenly moonlight.”  Opening his capacious greatcoat, he brought from concealment a small case, which Tom eyed askance, and I regarded ominously, though it had but a mere professional aspect to its owner.