utant-general, no harm came to
me. Habit is the great sedative; at times, penning my spy's journal, I
smiled to remember how it was with me when first I came to New York in
1777, four years since, a country lad of nineteen, fresh from the
frontier, where all my life had been spent among the Oneidas and the
few neighbors nearest Broadalbin Bush--a raw youth, frightened but
resolved; and how I lived through those first months of mental terror,
now appalled by the fate of our Captain Nathan Hale, now burning with a
high purpose and buoyed up by pride that his Excellency should have
found in me a fit instrument for his designs.

I have never known whether or not I am what men call brave, for I
understand fear and I turn cold at thought of death. Often I have sat
alone in the house watching the sober folk along Broadway and Wall
Street, knowing all the while that these same good people might
to-morrow all go flocking to Catiemuts Hill near the Fresh Water, or to
that open space in the "Fields" between the jail and the Almshouse, to
see me on the gallows. If such thoughts do not assail the brave--if
restless nights, wakeful dawns, dull days are not their portion--I must
own that all these were mine, not often, perhaps, but too frequent to
flatter self-esteem. And, fight them as I might, it was useless; for
such moments came without warning--often when I had been merry with
friends, at times when, lulled by long-continued security, I had nigh
forgotten through eventless months that there was a war and that I had
become a New Yorker only because of war.

It was harder now, in one sense; four years as secretary to my kinsman,
Sir Peter Coleville, had admitted me to those social intimacies so
necessary to my secret office; and, alas! friendships had been made and
ties formed not only in the line of duty, but from impulse and out of
pure affection.

I had never found it was required of me to pose as a rabid loyalist,
and so did not, being known as disinterested and indifferent, and
perhaps for that reason not suspected. My friends were from necessity
among the best among the loyalists--from choice, too, for I liked them
for their own sakes, and it was against their cause I worked, not
against them.

It went hard with me to use them as I did--I so loathing perfidy in
others; yet if it be perfidy to continue in duty as I understood duty,
then I practised it, and at times could scarce tolerate myself, which
was a weakness, becau