more active command, and Washington gave him West Point for

B.Arnold M.Sind

his post of duty.

West Point was the most important post in our possession. It was the stronghold which guarded the Hudson, and kept the British from their darling project of cutting off New York from New England. Therefore in sending Arnold to command there, Washington gave him a great trust to hold.

But Arnold was a bad-hearted man, capable of betraying trust. He had at that very time planned to sell himself to the Brit

ish, and had named the price at which he could be bought. He asked £10,000 in English gold, and a commission in the royal army, and Sir Henry Clinton had offered to pay it to him.

I have told you Arnold's wife was a Tory, who was living in Philadelphia when Howe was there. It is said that she wrote letters at intervals to her acquaintances in the British army, among whom was young Major André, an adjutant-general of General Clinton. It may have been in this way that Arnold first came into correspondence with Major André. At any rate, for some time they exchanged letters, which were signed "Gustavus" by Arnold, and "John Anderson" by André.

In September General Clinton sent Major André to West Point to visit Arnold, and arrange definitely for the betrayal of that post into his hands. André went up in a British vessel named the Vulture, and was carried on shore in a boat to a house inside the American lines. There Arnold met him, and the matter was fully discussed. The next day when André wished to rejoin his vessel

he found it had gone down the river. Some patriots had seen it

there, and suspecting it to be an English vessel, they had dragged an old cannon to the river bank, firing directly into the Vulture, till they had obliged the captain to hoist anchor and sail toward New York.

André was forced to cross the river and go by horse to New York city. Arnold gave him a pass, and a disguise in place of his uniform as an English officer, and thus provided, he crossed the river just below West Point.

He had passed the American lines, and had reached Tarrytown on the Hudson.

Major Andre

Before night-fall he would be in the camp at New York, and the plan for the surrender would be in Clinton's hands. Almost free from apprehension of danger, he rode on. Suddenly three men appeared in his path. Without producing his pass, he asked them, "Where do you belong."

"I

"Down below," answered one. "Down below" meant New York, and André was thrown off his guard by the answer. belong there also," he said. "I am a British officer on important business. Do not detain me."

"Then you are our prisoner," answered the men.

André then produced his pass, but as by his own confession he was a British officer, it availed nothing. He offered his watch, his purse, and more valuable than either, he offered to deliver to them next day a cargo of English dry goods if they would let him pass. They were unmoved by his bribes, and already had begun to search him. They searched pockets, saddle-bags, his hat. They even ripped open the linings of his coat. The prisoner stood nearly naked in the road, yet no paper had been found. At length they pulled off his boots. His boots were empty; but they heard the rustle of paper when they were drawn off. The stockings came last, and in his stockings, under the soles of his feet, were found, in Arnold's handwriting, the treasonable papers, with a plan of the fort, mode of entrance, and everything to facilitate its surrender to Clinton.

The three men (their names were John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wert) took their prisoner and the papers to

the nearest officer, Colonel Jameson, and gave him up. André asked one favor of Colonel Jameson, that he might write a brief note to Arnold, and Jameson, not understanding the importance of the capture, granted his request. André wrote, "John Anderson has been taken on his way to New York," and sent this warning by a speedy messenger."

The note reached Arnold in time. Washington had met Rochambeau in Hartford, had finished his talk with him, and was on his way to West Point. At any moment Arnold might see him enter his head-quarters. He hurriedly made all his preparations for escape, mounted his horse, and rode to the nearest boat-landing, plunging down a steep and almost impassable precipice to reach it. This precipice was afterwards named "The Traitor's Hill." At the landing he took boat, and tying his white handkerchief to a stick, waved it aloft that he might not be fired on by the guns of the fort, and was rowed safely to the Vulture. Almost as soon as he reached that vessel, orders came from head-quarters to fire on his boat. Washington had arrived there and learned of his treachery.

Arnold reached New York in safety, leaving André in captivity. André was taken before the American officers and examined as a spy. He told the whole truth with the utmost frankness, and claimed that he was not a spy, that he had had no intention even of entering our lines, but had come up at the command of his general, to meet and confer with Arnold.

Wherever he went, the young prisoner won all hearts. His manners were charming; he was handsome, well educated, a clever artist, and gifted with some literary ability. The hearts of the American officers with whom he was thrown in his captivity warmed toward him, and every one felt the deepest interest in his fate. But the tribunal before which he was tried, decided that he was a spy, and as a spy he must suffer death.

Sir Henry Clinton made every effort to avert the sentence, but the judges were inexorable. It had been the previous custom in both armies to hang all spies, and there had been repeated executions on both sides. When the British demanded André's release, the Americans reminded them of the fate of young Nathan Hale from Connecticut, who had been found inside the enemy's lines as a spy in 1776, and had been hanged immediately. His executioners had denied him even the solace of a clergyman in his last moments; and when he died saying, "I regret that I have but one life to lose

for my country," they refused to send any account of his last moments to his friends, declaring "the rebels should not know they had a man who could meet death so bravely.” Hale's execution had caused great excitement in the country, then unused to the barbarities which all war involves, and although many spies had since been hung, they remembered more vividly than any other the execution of this promising young hero.

When André, at first expecting to be released, found that he was to die, he prepared to meet death firmly. He said frankly that although not afraid of death, he dreaded to die like a dog, with a rope round his neck, and wrote the following letter to Washington:

"SIR: Buoyed above the terrors of death by the consciousness of a life devoted to honorable pursuits, I trust that the request I make to your excellency at this serious period, and which is to soften my last moments, will not be rejected. Sympathy toward a soldier, will surely induce your excellency and a military tribunal, to adapt the mode of my death to the feelings of a man of honor. Let me hope, sir, if aught in my character impresses you with esteem toward me, if aught in my misfortunes marks me as the victim of policy, and not of resentment, I shall experience the operations of these feelings in your breast by being informed, I am not to die on a gibbet. I have the honor to be

"Your excellency's most obedient and humble servant,
"JOHN ANDRÉ."

Washington laid this letter before the military tribunal which had judged André. It was composed of some of the best American officers, and it included also the humane Marquis de Lafayette, and Baron Steuben, who, though he was a graduate of the most severe military school of Germany, was a tender-hearted man. This tribunal thought the petition of André should not be granted, and Washington, perhaps from a repugnance to write a denial, did not answer the letter.

But Washington was not a man who could remain indifferent to the fate of so noble an officer as André; and while the British were denouncing him as a monster of cruelty, who gloated over the blood of his victim; while the base traitor, Arnold, dared to write him an impertinent letter, threatening retaliation if André were not given up, Washington was silently maturing a plan, by which he hoped André might yet be saved.

To save André, it would be necessary to substitute some one in his place, and so appease the demands of justice. The only man who could avert the doom of death from André, was Benedict Arnold, the man who had betrayed him. To seize Arnold would be in effect to free André. This was Washington's project. He took only Major Henry Lee into his confidence, an officer on whose prudence he knew he could rely. He asked Lee to select from among his soldiers one whom he could trust in a difficult and dangerous undertaking, and told him his desire to capture Arnold, in order that the gallant young Major André might be restored to his friends.

Henry Lee.

Lee chose a man for this scheme, a brave young sergeant, named John Champe, a man reserved, vigilant, and intelligent, and induced him to make this attempt. Champe was to desert from the American camp, and join the British in New York, in such a manner as to deceive both his friends and enemies. After a long conference with Lee, Champe started with his horse, and made down the Hudson River road toward New York. The American sentinels were thickly posted to prevent desertion, and his ride was a dangerous one. He had only been gone half an hour when a watchful officer came to Lee's quarters with the intelligence that a man, most likely a deserter, had passed over the lines toward New York. He asked Lee for an order to send a body of mounted men to arrest him. Lee made all the delay he possibly could. He feared the brave sergeant might be killed in the pursuit, but in order to keep up appearances, he was obliged to send the detachment after him. The flight and pursuit were a hot one. Champe was in immediate danger of being taken by his fellow soldiers, when after a break-neck ride he reached the bank of the Hudson, where some British galleys lay in full sight. He leaped into the river, and swam for the galleys, hailing them as a deserter; they approached, took him on board, and sailed with him to New York.

Champe's comrades on the bank discharged after him their rifles, captured his horse, and returned sadly to camp. When Lee saw them approaching with the riderless horse, he was dumb with anxiety as to the fate of Champe, but when he learned that he was safe, concealed his joy, and went to report to Washington.