"Would you reprimand me--you damned upstart?"
"General, you may strike me, if you will, but I can not help saying that we young men must look to you older ones for a good example."
Very calmly and politely the young man spoke these words. He towered above the man Arnold in spirit and stature. The latter did not commit the folly of striking him but with a look of scorn ordered him to leave the office.
Jack obeyed the order and went at once to call upon his old friend, Governor Reed. He told the Governor of his falling out with the Major-General.
"Arnold is a sordid, selfish man and a source of great danger to our cause," said the Governor. "He is vain and loves display and is living far beyond his means. To maintain his extravagance he has resorted to privateering and speculation, and none of it has been successful. He is deeply involved in debt. It is charged that he has used his military authority for private gain. He was tried by a court-martial but escaped with only a reprimand from the Commander-in-Chief. He is thick with the Tories. He is the type of man who would sell his master for thirty pieces of silver."
"This is alarming," said Jack.
"My boy an ill wind is blowing on us," the Governor went on. "We have all too many Arnolds in our midst. Our currency has depreciated until forty shillings will not buy what one would have bought before the war. The profit makers are rolling in luxury and the poor army starves. The honest and patriotic are impoverished while those who practise fraud and Toryism are getting rich."
Depressed by this report of conditions in America Jack set out for Washington's headquarters on the Hudson. Never had the posture of American affairs looked so hopeless. The Governor had sold him a young mare with a white star in her forehead and a short, white stocking on her left fore-leg, known in good time as the horse of destiny.
"She was a well turned, high spirited creature with good plumes, a noble eye and a beautiful head and neck," Jack wrote long after the day he parted with her. "I have never ridden a more distinguished animal. She was in every way worthy of the task ahead of her."
When he had crossed the King's Ferry the mare went lame. A little beyond the crossing he met a man on a big, roan gelding. Jack stopped him to get information about the roads in the north.