s, and ascertaining its contents. The
lines I read hastily seemed to blur before my eyes; I could barely
comprehend their purport. Little by little I grasped the meaning of it
all, and then my mind leaped to recognition of Grant's purpose. They were
notes of instruction, brief orders, suggestions, memoranda, such as might
be issued to a secret agent greatly trusted. These were addressed simply
"Mortimer," many unsigned, others marked by initials, but I instantly
recognized the handwriting of Washington, Hamilton, and Lee. Without
question this packet was the property of Eric Mortimer, but why had the
boy preserved these private instructions, covering months of operations,
I should judge, although scarcely one was dated? And what caused them to
be of such value to Captain Grant?

The answer came in a flash of suspicion--the Colonel. He could be
threatened with them, blackmailed, disgraced before Sir Henry Clinton,
driven from his command. They were addressed merely to "Mortimer,"
discovered at Elmhurst, and were sufficient to convict of treason. It was
a fiendish plot, well conceived, and Grant was fully capable of carrying
it out to the end. I could realize what the possession of these papers
meant to him--military advancement, a distribution of the Mortimer estate
in which he would doubtless share, and a fresh hold on Claire whereby he
could terrify the girl into accepting him.

I stood there in uncertainty, turning these papers over and over in my
hands, striving to determine my duty. Should I return to Elmhurst? To do
so would only bring me into renewed peril, and would apparently benefit
no one. Without this packet Grant was helpless to injure Colonel
Mortimer. As to Claire, Seldon would protect her for the present, and as
soon as the father returned, he would doubtless compel her to accompany
him back to Philadelphia. The best service I could render was to destroy
these notes, and then seek out Eric Mortimer, in Lee's camp, and tell him
the whole story. All that any one could do now was to warn the Mortimers
against Grant, to let them know his treachery, and this could be best
accomplished through Eric. Although in different armies, striving against
each other in the field, there must still exist some means of
communication between father and son, or, if not, then between brother
and sister.

With flint and steel I built a small fire of leaves in a cleft beside the
road, and fed to the flames one by one the paper