His dark, lean, eager visage caught the lantern light as he turned to scan the moonlit sky.  “Ten minutes,” he muttered; “we should strike German Flatts by sundown to-morrow if our supplies come up.”  And, aloud, with an abrupt and vigorous gesture, “McCraw’s band are scalping the settlers, they say?”

I told him what I had seen.  He nodded, then his virile face changed and he gave me a sulky look.

“Captain Ormond,” he said, “folk say that I brood over the wrongs done me by Congress.  It’s a lie; I don’t care a damn about Congress—­but let it pass.  What I wish to say is this:  On the second of August the best general in these United States except George Washington was deprived of his command and superseded by a—­a—­thing named Gates....  I speak of General Philip Schuyler, my friend, and now my fellow-victim.”

Shocked and angry at the news of such injustice to the man whose splendid energy had already paralyzed the British invasion of New York, I stiffened up, rigid and speechless.

“Ho!” cried Arnold, with a disagreeable laugh.  “It mads you, does it?  Well, sir, think of me who have lived to see five men promoted over my head—­and I left in the anterooms of Congress to eat my heart out!  But let that pass, too.  By the eternal God, I’ll show them what stuff is in me!  Let it pass, Ormond, let it pass.”

He began to pace the ground, gnawing his thick lower lip, and if ever the infernal fire darted from human eyes, I saw its baleful flicker then.

With a heave of his chest and a scowl, he controlled his voice, stopping in his nervous walk to face me again.

“Ormond, you’ve gone up higher—­the commission is here.”  He pulled a packet of papers from his breast-pocket and thrust them at me.  “Schuyler did it.  He thinks well of you, sir.  On the first of August he learned that he was to be superseded.  He told Clinton that you deserved a commission for what you did at that Iroquois council-fire.  Here it is; you’re to raise a regiment of rangers for local defence of the Mohawk district....  I congratulate you, Colonel Ormond.”

He offered his bony, nervous hand; I clasped it, dazed and speechless.

“Remember me,” he said, eagerly.  “Let me count on your voice at the next council of war.  You will not regret it, Colonel.  Even if you go higher—­even if you rise over my luckless head, you will not regret the friendship of Benedict Arnold.  For, by Heaven, sir, I have it in me to lead men; and they shall not keep me down, and they shall not fetter me—­no, not even this beribboned lap-dog Gates!...  Stand my friend, Ormond.  I need every friend I have.  And I promise you the world shall hear of me one day!”

I shall never forget his worn and shadowy face, the long nose, the strong, selfish chin, the devouring flame burning his soul out through his eyes.

“Luck be with you!” he said, abruptly, extending his hand.  Once more that bony, fervid clasp, and he was gone.