Major Andrt and General Arnold. 27 



and honour by his sword could ever sink so low. Impossible ! the 

 soldier who has fought his country's battles so nobly, would perish 

 rather than tarnish the laurels he has so daringly gathered. Fore- 

 most in every danger, sharing every privation with the meanest pri- 

 vate in his corps, Arnold lives but in the affections of his fellow- 

 soldiers ; glory was his object and war his sport. Tell me, Jacob, 

 is it in pursuits like these that men become sordid and avaricious, or 

 that the proud spirit learns the grovelling arts of a cheating dealer ? " 

 " Your enthusiasm outruns your judgment, Richard," replied the old 

 man seriously : " I grant you, Arnold is brave ; but it is the bravery 

 of animal instinct. He would have fought as gallantly amongst a 

 horde of mercenaries as in the consecrated ranks of freedom ; his 

 passion is the thirst of gold ; to that, and to an ostentatious disposi- 

 tion, all his errors are owing ; for these he would brave perils greater 

 than he has yet done, and to these he has sacrificed his fair fame, the 

 honest approval of his own heart, and the patriot's incense the ap- 

 plause of his grateful country." 



" Jacob, you have outlived your best feelings, age has jaundiced 

 your views, and you judge of men " 



" By realities, not appearances, boy. Arnold I have marked 

 throughout his dazzling career, and I have seen in him the soldier of 

 fortune, impatient for wealth which he could only attain by unjust 

 means : depend on it that this inquiry will terminate fatally for his 

 character : his oppressions, his exactions, and the gross prostitution 

 of his authority, to enrich himself and his abandoned accomplices 

 while he held command in Philadelphia, are too notorious to be suc- 

 cessfully denied." 



" We shall see," replied the young soldier confidently, as, fol- 

 lowed by his companion, he forced a passage through the crowd of 

 idlers that thronged the porch of the hall of justice. 



The appearance and arrangement of the interior of the court was 

 simple in the extreme. At a plain deal table, formed of a few rough- 

 hewn boards, sat some ten or a dozen of those semi-military men, 

 whose shrewd, resolute, but unimaginative countenances might have 

 been taken as models for a group of the predial warriors of Rome's 

 early day sitting in council. 



Distinguished from his fellow-soldiers only by holding his place at 

 the head of the table, and by the superior dignity of his mien, sat 

 Washington ; his clear, searching eye bent upon a witness who was 

 under examination, and to whom he occasionally put questions in 

 that calm impressive tone which extracted truth from unwilling lips, 

 as the prophet's rod compelled the pure stream from the reluctant 

 rock. 



Throughout the dense assemblage that witnessed the proceedings 

 with intense interest, not a sound was to be heard except at those 

 points of the evidence at which some act of profligacy or oppression 

 was brought home to the prisoner, then, a murmur of indignation 

 infringed, for an instant, the strict decorum of the court. 



Alone, unmoved, and unabashed by the accumulated evidences of 

 his guilt, Arnold stood at the lower end of the table, his arms folded 

 across his breast, almost contemptuously regarding his numerous 



