“It makes me laugh to think how you will kick and squirm to-morrow, when the rope is put around your neck,” was the cruel reply.
That the captive made no reply, seemed to anger him. “If I had my way you wouldn’t hang!” he cried. “You’d burn! burn! burn! The Indians know how to torture their victims, when they kill them at the stake. I wish you might be scorched to pay for that fellow you saved at Fort Stanwix. He ought to have died, and you ought to burn. Every rebel in the land should be burned. I’ll tell the general to burn you—” and ran from the room.
But when he went to General Burgoyne with his request, he was told that the sentence of the prisoner could not be changed. He brooded over the answer.
“I’ll change it,” he muttered, and with a cunning look in his eyes, he went to the building in which the prisoner was confined, walking around it again and again.
The structure had been intended for a shop, with living-rooms above. At the rear was a small lean-to, once used as a stable. In this last a large amount of rubbish had collected. The sharp eyes of the old man took in all this, and his plan was formed. Late in the night he slipped out of the tent he occupied in company with his grandson, and made his way to the rear of the barracks.
“The soldiers can get out,” he muttered to himself; “but that young rebel can’t. I’ll burn him, burn him up!”
Into the shanty, unobserved, he crawled. In the farther corner he pulled some of the most inflammable material together, and then took out of his pocket his flint and steel. Into the rubbish the tiny sparks fell. Slowly the flame grew. He waited until it was under good headway, and then slipped away to his tent.
Ten minutes passed, and then the alarm rang through the encampment. “Fire! Fire! The barracks are on fire!” some one shouted, and others took up the cry.
Ira Le Geyt awoke and called to his grandfather, but the old man apparently slept soundly. Not until having been shaken vigorously did he arouse himself, and then, rubbing his eyes, he asked innocently:
“What is it?”