latest instructions. Sir Henry Clinton had recommended him not
to quit his uniform; but, yielding to the insinuating Arnold, the unhappy
young man had put on a disguise; he had been made prisoner. Recognized
and treated as a spy, he was to die on the gallows. It was the ignominy
alone of this punishment which perturbed his spirit. "Sir," he wrote to
Washington, "sustained against fear of death by the reflection that no
unworthy action has sullied a life devoted to honor, I feel confident
that in this my extremity, your Excellency will not be deaf to a prayer
the granting of which will soothe my last moments. Out of sympathy for a
soldier, your Excellency will, I am sure, consent to adapt the form of my
punishment to the feelings of a man of honor. Permit me to hope that, if
my character have inspired you with any respect, if I am in your eyes
sacrificed to policy and not to vengeance, I shall have proof that those
sentiments prevail in your heart by learning that I am not to die on the
gallows."

With a harshness of which there is no other example in his life, and of
which he appeared to always preserve a painful recollection, Washington
remained deaf to his prisoner's noble appeal: Major Andre underwent the
fate of a spy. "You are a witness that I die like a man of honor," he
said to an American officer whose duty it was to see the orders carried
out. The general did him justice. "Andre," he said, "paid his penalty
with the spirit to be expected from a man of such merit and so brave an
officer. As to Arnold, he has no heart. . . . Everybody is surprised
to see that he is not yet swinging on a gibbet." The passionate
endeavors of the Americans to inflict upon the traitor the chastisement
he deserved remained without effect. Constantly engaged, as an English
general, in the war, with all the violence bred of uneasy hate, Arnold
managed to escape the just vengeance of his countrymen; he died twenty
years later, in the English possessions, rich and despised. "What would
you have done if you had succeeded in catching me?" he asked an American
prisoner one day. "We would have severed from your body the leg that had
been wounded in the service of the country, and would have hanged the
rest on a gibbet," answered the militiaman quietly.

The excitement caused by the treachery of Arnold had not yet
subsided, when a fresh cup of bitterness was put to the lips of
the general-in-chief, and disturbed the hopes he