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point and counterpoint of spying in New Jersey and New York.
    The road ahead dipped down into a broad open expanse, a field of several dozen acres, covered with tents, and a two-story stone farmhouse was set back a hundred yards from the road.
    Alongside of it, carpenters were busy erecting a simple gallows—not the trapdoor kind, recently developed and claimed to be more humane since the victim’s neck was usually snapped, bringing instant death, but the old-fashioned kind of just vertical uprights, a crosstree, the rope already dangling from it. Next to it, shovels rose and fell rhythmically from out of the ground, the grave digging detail at work.
    Allen all but came to a stop, staring at it.
    “Andre is in there,” Peter said, nodding to the farmhouse. “It takes place the hour after dawn tomorrow.”
    Allen, throat again tightening, could not speak for a moment.
    “My orders are to proceed to General Washington’s headquarters and present a missive from General Clinton.”
    “And I have told you, his Excellency the general will not receive you.”
    “Major Wellsley, we are both bound by our orders, please escort me to General Washington’s headquarters. If rejected, I can at least tell my general I had made the personal appeal and that your general acted directly toward me as you claim he now will.”
    Peter sighed, finally nodded, and without comment spurred his mount, Allen taking a moment to catch up. For an instant there was a childhood memory of having “borrowed” two horses from the barn of the Snyders, who lived beyond the edge of their village, and racing them bareback across the pasture. He recalled Peter falling off and cracking a rib, and how the Snyders, good people that they were, had actually rigged up their carriage to take Peter home.
    They rode for a couple of miles, passing more and more troops camped in fields or out drilling, and woodcutting parties working on the stockpiles for approaching winter. It always amazed him how an army of just several thousand could devour acres of woods in but a few days. Allen took note of their appearance, and sensed their morale was high. Most were somewhat raggedy, but they were not the ill-uniformed scarecrows he had faced at Germantown and Monmouth.
    The French supply ships, able to run the blockade, had brought in uniforms, new muskets, tentage, artillery, and ammunition for thousands. It showed. There was even a company of French troops, in their distinctive and somewhat absurd white uniforms, impossible to keep clean in the field, out drilling with absolute precision. He could not help but see all this, but of course, by the rules of war, while under a flag of truce he was forever forbidden on his word of honor to report on anything observed. Peter could have required him to wear a blindfold, but had not done so, at least a small concession to a memory of honorable behavior dating back to childhood.
    At last, General Washington’s headquarters loomed into view, made obvious by the commander-in-chief flag flying in front and by the guard details, which had, without doubt, been doubled and doubled again since the Arnold incident started, and with it the revelation that part of the plan was to have Washington himself captured or killed.
    Peter reined in, and an orderly briskly stepped forward to take his mount’s bridle, then offered the same service to Allen. It had been a long day of riding up from Manhattan, and he wished he could just walk around and stretch for a few minutes, but knew that all eyes, most of them hostile, were upon him. Peter’s two escorts and Sergeant O’Toole, still carrying the flag of truce and looking about, obviously still frightened, came up and dismounted as well.
    Peter approached the door to Washington’s residence, a strongly built home, typical of this region of the Hudson Valley, influenced by Dutch designs, constructed of sturdy fieldstone with a high sloping roof. The two guards directly at the door came to