“It is well that kings have gold for their use. For the bones that they throw to their dogs would soon play out, unless the dry bones that are rattled scare the whelps. “My mission has failed! Why? The Americans are superior to the system that makes hirelings of us all. No system of finance affects them. They refused my gold. Mutual trust in each other, as men, made their pieces of commissary paper as useful as my gold. Of all the men that I met, Arnold was the only one that I could convince with an Englishman’s argument, pounds sterling. American manhood is a product of American soil. It has grown out of the forests and the streams. It is incorruptible. If its ideals are lost in the greed for gold, the debased have to flee America and seek an asylum, like Arnold, in the bosom of the Englishman where pounds sterling can outweigh character and manhood. “I return to England. I give them back their accursed gold, and show them that though Englishmen may think like Warren Hastings, that the souls of men are expressed in pounds sterling according to their stations, yet in one place in this world manhood stands above guineas, and AMERICAN MANHOOD HAS NOT ITS PRICE!” CHAPTER XL We now come to the home affairs of Barclugh. He returned to England after his interview in New York. Arnold was not successful in his enterprises after his failure to surrender West Point. He ravaged towns in Connecticut and in Virginia, as a British Brigadier, with fiendish delight, and history tells us that he led anything but a happy existence in England; and at last, died in seclusion. “Unwept, unhonored and unsung.” Poor Andre! He was the victim of the ambition of youth. His superiors depended on his ability to do extraordinary things; however, his nature was too guileless to cope with the daring of a man like Arnold. He ought never to have gone into the American lines. To have met Arnold secretly again at their rendezvous would have been an easy matter. His superior, Clinton, gave him explicit instructions not to enter the American outposts; but Arnold’s headlong rashness led him into danger and he paid the penalty with his life. Lord Carlisle, the British Commissioner, returned to England and history tells us that he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and sank into oblivion. He and George Selwyn were the prime movers in the plot, the purpose of which was to get funds from government with which to square the losses of Fox at the gaming-table.