“I will inform his wife myself,” said he, making a note of the matter. “He died a hero performing his duty. And now may I have the despatches?”
He extended his hand with a smile, saying as he did so: “A man would have given them first, and the story afterward; but this little maid feared we would forget the vidette if she delayed until afterward.”
“Yes,” acknowledged the girl, looking at him earnestly, for she had feared that very thing. “Sir,” giving him the despatches, “I pray thee to pardon me for being the bearer of such awful tidings.”
There was a slight smile on General Gates’ face at her manner of speaking, but it died quickly as he ran his eye down the written page. He uttered an exclamation as he mastered the contents, and then stood staring at the paper. At length, however, he turned to the men at the table, and said in a hollow voice:
“Gentlemen, it becomes my painful duty to inform you that Major-General Arnold is a traitor to his country.”
An awful pause followed the announcement—a pause that throbbed with the despair of brave men. Disaster had followed fast upon disaster. The South was all but lost. Two armies had been wiped out of existence in three months, and what was left was but a pitiful remnant. Washington’s force in the North was so weakened by detaching troops for the defense of the South that he was unable to strike a blow. And now this calamity was the culmination. A murmur broke out in the room. Then, as though galvanized into action by that murmur, John Drayton, who had stood as though petrified, bounded forward with a roar.
“’Tis false,” he cried, whipping out his sword. “I’ll run any man through who says that my general is a traitor!”
He advanced threateningly toward General Gates as he spoke. He had drawn upon his superior officer, but there was no anger in the glance that Horatio Gates cast upon him.
“Would God it were false,” he said solemnly. “But here are proofs. This is a letter from Congress; this one from General Washington himself, and this——”
“I tell you it is not true,” reiterated the boy fiercely. “Look how they’ve always treated him! It’s another one of their vile charges trumped up against him. Daniel Morgan, you were with him at Quebec and Saratoga! Are you going to stand there and hear such calumny?”