George was so eager at this point that he crawled on all fours up to Lance and gazed breathlessly into his face.
"It was Lord Fairfax dressed up as a woman! And he says, when I had come to myself a little, for I nearly dropped dead with surprise, 'If I can fool my own men and my own brother officers, I ought to be able to fool the Frenchmen into letting me into the town.' And sure enough, Mr. Washington, that was exactly what he did."
Lance paused to get the full dramatic effect of this. It was not wasted on his young listener, for George gave a gasp of astonishment that spoke volumes, and his first words, when speech returned to him, were,
"Well, sir, Lord Fairfax told me that he had a scheme to get in the town as a woman, and I was to go with him as his servant, because I could speak the lingo; and on the frontier there they have so many accents that they couldn't tell if you were a Dutchman or an Englishman or a Russian or a Prussian; and, besides, my lord said, my French had a High-Dutch twang that couldn't be excelled. He was a week thinking it over and practising in his tent. Of course he didn't tell but one or two persons what he was after; he meant it to be as secret as possible. So when he would send for me to his tent at night every crack and cranny would be stopped, and there would be just one or two young officers putting the Earl through his paces, as it were. He was a slim, handsome young man then, and when he got a woman's wig on, and a little rouge, and was dressed in the latest fashion, with a great hoop--for he meant to represent a lady, not a peasant woman--anybody would have taken him for a pretty young lady. The hoop and the sack and all the fallals a lady would wear were of real service to him, as he could wear his uniform under them, and so, if he should be found out and arrested, he would be entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war. If he had been caught in the French lines without his uniform, he would have been strung up in short order as a spy, according to the articles of war. I kept my uniform on too, but that was a simple matter, as I was only disguised by another suit of man's clothing put on over it.
"My lord had something else under his hoop besides his uniform--a good rapier, with a Toledo blade; and his lace neck-handkerchief was fastened with a jewelled dagger that was more than a toy. He was to be Madame Geoffroy in search of her husband, who was supposed to be in the garrison, and I was to be a great, stupid, faithful Alsacian servant, and my name was to be Jacques; and my name is Peter, sir. I had no arms, only a great stick; but there was a knob in that stick, and when I pulled out that knob I had a sword.