Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
down the steps from the attic, Reilly was naturally surprised and
mystified by this unexpected assault. He struggled instinctively to
break loose from the unfriendly grasp, and when he finally succeeded he
twisted his body around so that he faced across the room. Immediately he
made the remarkable discovery that there were four other persons in the
apartment--three uncouth-looking fellows habited in fantastic but ragged
garments, and a matronly-looking woman, the latter standing over a
washtub which had been elevated upon two chairs in a corner near the
fireplace. To all appearance the woman had been busy at her work and had
stopped for the moment to see what the men were going to do; her waist
sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders and her arms dripped with water
and soapsuds. Over the tops of the tubs, partly filled with water, there
were visible the edges of several well-soaked fabrics. Too add to his
astonishment he noticed that in the chimney-place, which a moment before
was falling apart, but now seemed to be clean and in good condition, a
cheerful fire burned, and that above the flames was suspended an iron
pot, from which issued a jet of steam. He noticed also that the entire
appearance of the room had undergone a great change. Everything seemed
to be in good repair, tidy and neat; the ceilings, the walls and the
door; even the stairway leading to the attic. The openings in the walls
were fitted with window sashes and well-painted doors. The apartment
had, in fact, evolved under his very eyesight from a state of absolute
ruin into one of excellent preservation.
All of this seemed so weird and uncanny, that Reilly stood for a moment
or two in the transformed apartment, utterly dumbfounded, with his mouth
wide open and his eyes all but popping out of his head. He was brought
to his senses by the fellow who had shaken him growling out:
“Come! Explain yourself!”
“An explanation is due me,” Reilly managed to gasp.
“Don’t bandy words with the rascal, Harry,” one of the other men spoke
up. “Bring him along to headquarters.”
Thereupon, without further parley, the three men marched Reilly in
military fashion into the open air and down to the road. Here he picked
up at the gate-post his bicycle, while they unstacked a group of three
old-fashioned-looking muskets located close by. When the young man had
entered the house a few minutes before, this stack of arms had not been
there. He could not understand it. Neither could he understand, on
looking back at the building as he was marched off down the road, the
mysterious agency that had transformed its dilapidated exterior, just as
had been the interior, into a practically new condition.
While they trudged along, the strangers exhibited a singular interest in
the wheel Reilly pushed at his side, running their coarse hands over the
frame and handle-bar, and acting on the whole as though they never
before had seen a bicycle. This in itself was another surprise. He had
hardly supposed there were three men in the country so totally
unacquainted with what is a most familiar piece of mechanism everywhere.
At the same time that they were paying so much attention to the wheel,
Reilly in turn was studying with great curiosity his singular-looking
captors. Rough, unprepossessing appearing fellows they were, large of
frame and unshaven, and, it must be added, dirty of face. What remained
of their very ragged clothing, he had already noticed, was of a most
remarkable cut and design, resembling closely the garments worn by the
Continental militiamen in the War of Independence. The hats were broad,
low of crown, and three-cornered in shape; the trousers were
buff-colored and ended at the knees, and the long, blue spike-tailed
coats were flapped over at the extremities of the tails, the flaps being
fastened down with good-sized brass buttons. Leather leggings were
strapped around cowhide boots, through the badly worn feet of which, in
places where the leather had cracked open, the flesh, unprotected by
stockings, could be seen. Dressed as he was, in a cleanly, gray cycling
costume, Reilly’s appearance, most assuredly, was strongly in contrast
to that of his companions.
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