After a brisk walk of twenty minutes, during which they occasionally met and passed by one or two or perhaps a group of men clothed and outfitted like Reilly’s escorts, the little party followed the road up a slight incline and around a well-wooded bend to the left, coming quite suddenly, and to the captive, very unexpectedly, to what was without doubt a military encampment; a village, in fact, composed of many rows of small log huts. Along the streets, between the buildings, muskets were stacked in hundreds of places. Over in one corner, on a slight eminence commanding the road up which they had come, and cleverly hidden from it behind trees and shrubbery, the young man noticed a battery of field pieces. Wherever the eye was turned on this singular scene were countless numbers of soldiers all garmented in three-cornered hats, spike-tailed coats and knee breeches, walking lazily hither and thither, grouped around crackling fires, or parading up and down the streets in platoons under the guidance of ragged but stern-looking officers.
Harry stopped the little procession of four in front of one of the larger of the log houses. Then, while they stood there, the long blast from a bugle was heard, followed by the roll of drums. A minute or two afterward, several companies of militia marched up and grounded their arms, forming three sides of a hollow square around them, the fourth and open side being toward the log house. Directly succeeding this maneuver there came through the doorway of the house and stepped up the center of the square, stopping directly in front of Reilly, a dignified-looking person, tall and straight and splendidly proportioned of figure, and having a face of great nobility and character.
The cold chills chased one another down Reilly’s back. His limbs swayed and tottered beneath his weight. He had never experienced another such sensation of mingled astonishment and fright.
He was in the presence of General Washington. Not a phantom Washington, either, but Washington in the flesh and blood; as material and earthly a being as ever crossed a person’s line of vision. Reilly, in his time, had seen so many portraits, marble busts and statues of the great commander that he could not be mistaken. Recovering the use of his faculties, which for the moment he seemed to have lost, Reilly did the very commonplace thing that others before him have done when placed unexpectedly in remarkable situations. He pinched himself to make sure that he was in reality wide awake and in the natural possession of his senses. He felt like pinching the figure in front of him also, but he could not muster up the courage to do that. He stood there trying to think it all out, and as his thoughts became less stagnant, his fright dissolved under the process of reasoning his mind pursued. To reason a thing out, even though an explanation can only be obtained by leaving much of the subject unaccounted for, tends to make one bolder and less shaky in the knees.
The series of strange incidents which he was experiencing had been inaugurated in the old-fashioned dwelling he had visited after information concerning the roads. And everything had been going along in a perfectly normal way up to, the very moment when he had taken a drink from the bottle found in the fireplace. But from that precise time everything had gone wrongly. Hence the inference that the drinking of the peculiar liquid was accountable in some way or other for his troubles. There was a supernatural agency in the whole thing. That much must be admitted. And whatever that agency was, and however it might be accounted for, it had taken Reilly back into a period of time more than a hundred years ago, and landed him, body and soul, within the lines of the patriot forces wintering at Valley Forge. He might have stood there, turning over and over in his mind, pinching himself and muttering, all the morning, had not the newcomer ceased a silent but curious inspection of his person, and asked: “Who are you, sir?”
“John Reilly, at your pleasure,” the young man replied, adding a question on his own account: “And who are you, sir?”
Immediately he received a heavy thump on his back from Harry’s hard fist.
“It is not for you to question the general,” the ragged administrator of the blow exclaimed.
“And it is not for you to be so gay,” Reilly returned, angrily, giving the blow back with added force.
“Here, here!” broke in the first questioner. “Fisticuffs under my very nose! No more of this, I command you both.” To Harry he added an extra caution: “Your zeal in my behalf will be better appreciated by being less demonstrative. Blows should be struck only on the battlefield.” To Reilly he said, with a slight smile hovering over his face, “My name is Washington. Perhaps you may have heard of me?”
To this Reilly replied: “I have, indeed, and heard you very well spoken of, too.” Emboldened by the other’s smile, he ventured another question: “I think my reckoning of the day and year is badly at fault. An hour ago I thought the day was Christmas day. How far out of the way did my calculation take me, sir?”
“The day is indeed Christmas day, and the year is, as you must know, the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven.”
Reilly again pinched himself.
“Why do you bring this man to me?” Washington now inquired, turning to Harry and his companions.
“He is a spy, sir,” said Harry.
“That is a lie!” Reilly indignantly interpolated. “I have done nothing to warrant any such charge.”
“We found him in the Widow Robin’s house, pouring strong liquor down his throat.”
“I had gone inside after information concerning the roads—”
“Which he was getting from a bottle, sir.”
“If drinking from a bottle of necessity constitutes being a spy, I fear our camp is already a hotbed,” Washington somewhat sagely remarked, casting his eye around slyly at his officers and men. “Tell me,” he went on, with sudden sternness, looking Reilly through and through, as though to read his very thoughts, “is the charge true? Do you come from Howe?”
“The charge is not true, sir. I come from no one. I simply am making a tour of pleasure through this part of the country on my bicycle.”
“With the country swarming with the men from two hostile armies, any kind of a tour, save one of absolute necessity, seems ill-timed.”
“When I set out I knew nothing about any armies. The fact is, sir—” Reilly started to make an explanation, but he checked himself on realizing that the telling of any such improbable yarn would only increase the hazardousness of his position.
“Well?” Washington questioned, in a tone of growing suspicion.
“I certainly did not know that your army or any other army was quartered in this vicinity.” Reilly hesitated for lack of something further to say. “You see,” he finally added, prompted by a happy idea, “I rode my wheel from New York.”
“You may have come from New York, though it is hard to believe you came on that singular-looking machine so great a distance. Where is the horse which drew the vehicle?”
Reilly touched his bicycle. “This is the horse, sir, just as it is; the vehicle,” he said.
“The man is crazy!” Harry exclaimed. Washington only looked the incredulity he felt, and this time asked a double question.
“How can the thing be balanced without it be held upright by a pair of shafts from a horse’s back, and how is the motive power acquired?”
For an answer Reilly jumped upon the wheel, and at a considerable speed and in a haphazard way pedaled around the space within the hollow square of soldiers. Hither and thither he went, at one second nearly wheeling over the toes of the line of astonished, if not frightened, militiamen; at the next, bearing suddenly down on Harry and his companions and making them dance and jump about most alertly to avoid a collision. Even the dignified Washington was once or twice put to the necessity of dodging hurriedly aside when his equilibrium was threatened. Reilly eventually dismounted, doing so with assumed clumsiness by stopping the wheel at Harry’s back and falling over heavily against the soldier. Harry tumbled to the ground, but Reilly dexterously landed on his feet. At once he began offering a profusion of apologies.