There is no proof that either of the recipients did anything save throw the letters into the fire.
On the following day Baker and Forest returned from New Haven, bearing with them the thanks of the colony to Col. Ethan Allen and Col. Benedict Arnold. The latter containing the thanks of the assembly, engrossed on parchment and sealed with the seal of the colony, placed Allen in the first place, and only mentioned Arnold as a coadjutor.
The two emissaries were escorted to Ticonderoga by Col. Hinman and a regiment of Connecticut soldiers.
Hinman was commissioned to aid Allen in any way that he could, and to act under his direction.
Allen, however, determined on a wider field for himself and men than merely remaining as a garrison of a fort, with the mild excitement of an occasional scrimmage with the enemy when out on a foraging expedition, so he handed over the forts to Col. Hinman, taking a receipt for the same.
That curious old document is perhaps the only one in existence of the kind, for it is a receipt for the delivery of the forts of Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Skenesburgh, and is made out much in the same way as a receipt for a few dollars would be.
Arnold was to remain with Hinman for a time, but with the lower rank of major.
With only a small number of followers, including Seth Warner, Remember Baker, Eben Pike and twenty trusty mountaineers, Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, left the fort and proceeded to Albany.