The Argosy, Vol. 61, No. 4 — page 129: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE SPY QF VALLEY FORGE. No other man save Washington himself could command such love and admira- tion from the troops. He had a dozen nicknames — “ Mad Anthony,” “ Black- snake,” and ‘“‘ Dandy Wayne.” ‘The man was. never seen in any but a costume worthy to be worn at court. He went into the battle clad as if for a banquet. Wayne reached the farmhouse several minutes ahead of me, and his report was delivered before my arrival. As tered the big, low-ceiled living-room, he was standing with his back to a roaring wood fire, drinking hot coffee from a tin dipper, and pausing to snatch a word or two with some of the dozen or more occupants of the apartment. At his left, smoking a long church- warden pipe, lounged doughty Major Morton, of Virginia—‘‘ Old Solid Col- umn,” as he was even then called, al- though he was scarce more than twenty. To his right loomed up a portly giant, who looked more like a farmer than a soldier—General Nathanael Greene. Just beyond him, writing at a rude desk, sat a slender, red-haired youth— Colonel Alexander Hamilton, secretary to the commander-in-chief. Another lad, still younger, reclined in «a window-seat, poring over a French ro- mance. I had met him but once, when he returned to Valley Forge from Albany. But he was known to every soldier as the Marquis de Lafayette, the French patriot who had left court and estates to cast in his lot with the Colonists. In the great chair by the center-table, glancing at a sheaf of maps spread out before him, sat the chief. How shall I describe Washington? Often my chil- dren have begged me to. Yet I cannot. Tall, broad, dignified—no, that is not the vital idea. I can’t do it. He was a man! A man such as Provi- dence meant man to be. In his faded buff-and-blue Continental fatigue unfform he presented a figure that would at a glance have drawn at- tention amid a whole roomful of any Old-World monarchs I have ever seen. And yet he could unbend—not only to mirth, but to wrath as well—as more than one of us knew to our cost. There was no formal conference afoot. The big room for the time was more an officers’ club than aught else. Ceremony I en- 687 was not enforced. Yet, somehow, none of us could ever be wholly free from ceremony in the chief’s presence. Lafayette looked up from his book as I came in. I had met him a year before, and until now had not seen him since his recent return to Valley Forge. Yet he remembered me. _ Springing to his feet, the lad came forward with outstretched hand and smi- ling a welcome in that peculiarly winning style which was his birthright. “Major Dale,” he cried with his strong French accent. ‘You recall me? De Lafayette. I ask the honor of congrat- ulating you on your promotion to major’s rank, and far more upon the gallant feats in Philadelphia which caused it. Your adventures there were like a stage- play. Ma fot’ I would have given a year of my life to be in such a series of escapades—and ten years of it to be safe- ly out of them again. “They say when you came in here with your tale of tampering with Howe’s reports and with your own despatches bound in two gray coat-skirts, General Washington laughed aloud for the first time this winter. When do you go on your next secret-service venture?” ‘‘ Never, I hope,” was my fervent an- swer. “It is good to wear a sword at one’s side again, and to be able to look the world in the face with no fear of hangman’s noose. Even one meal a day and a fair prospect of starving or of being shot by the British in some skir- mish is a delight after my weeks in Phil- adelphia. I have had a full month of freedom since then, and I still revel in my liberty. I trust my next blow may be struck on the battle-field. Was there much of interest in General Wayne’s report? Or was it private?” ‘Tt told only of the usual raid on British forage-wagons and of a brush with some dragoons. And he brought back.a batch of Philadelphia newspapers captured from the dragoons’ luggage. General Washington divided them up among four of us for reading. I got two, but your English language makes stiff perusal for my Gallic brain. Nor does Philadelphia news greatly interest me. Would you care to look at them? Pass them on to Morton when you have read them.” VOO (©