“I think you’ve done well,” said Jack.  “Now go and get some rest.  To-morrow may be a hard day.”

2

Jack spent a bad night in the effort to be as great as his problem.  In the morning he sent Solomon and three other able scouts to look the ground over east, west and south of the army.  One of them was to take the road to Hartford and deliver a message to Washington.

After the noon mess, Arnold mounted his horse and rode away alone.  The young Brigadier sent for his trusted friend, Captain Merriwether.

“Captain, the General has set out on the east road alone,” said Jack.  “He is not well.  There’s something wrong with his heart.  I am a little worried about him.  He ought not to be traveling alone.  My horse is in front of the door.  Jump on his back and keep in sight of the General, but don’t let him know what you are doing.”

A little later Mrs. Arnold entered the office of the new Brigadier in a most cheerful mood.

“I have good news for you,” she announced.

“What is it?”

“Soon I hope to make a happy ending of your love-story.”

“God prosper you,” said the young man.

She went on with great animation:  “A British officer has come in a ship under a flag of truce to confer with General Arnold.  I sent a letter to Margaret Hare on my own responsibility with the General’s official communication.  I invited her to come with the party and promised her safe conduct to our house.  I expect her.  For the rest we look to you.”

The young man wrote:  “This announcement almost took my breath.  My joy was extinguished by apprehension before it could show itself.  I did not speak, being for a moment confused and blinded by lightning flashes of emotion.”

“It is your chance to bring the story to a pretty end,” she went on.  “Let us have a wedding at headquarters.  On the night of the twenty-eighth, General Washington will have returned.  He has agreed to dine with us that evening.”

“I think that she must have observed the shadow on my face for, while she spoke, a great fear had come upon me,” he testified in the Court of Inquiry.  “It seemed clear to me that, if there was a plot, the capture of Washington himself was to be a part of it and my sweetheart a helpful accessory.”

“‘Are you not pleased?’ Mrs. Arnold asked.

“I shook off my fear and answered:  ’Forgive me.  It is all so unexpected and so astonishing and so very good of you!  It has put my head in a whirl.’

“Gentlemen, I could see no sinister motive in this romantic enterprise of Mrs. Arnold,” the testimony proceeds.  “I have understood that her sympathies were British but, if so, she had been discreet enough in camp to keep them to herself.  Whatever they may have been, I felt as sure then, as I do now, that she was a good woman.  Her kindly interest in my little romance was just a bit of honest, human nature.  It pleased me and when I think of her look of innocent, unguarded, womanly frankness, I can not believe that she had had the least part in the dark intrigue of her husband.