"'They are not promising,' he answered. 'The defeat of Gates in the south and the scattering of his army in utter rout is not an encouraging event.' "'I think that we shall get along better now that the Gates bubble has burst,' I answered." This ends the testimony of "the able and most valued officer," Jack Irons, Jr. CHAPTER XXX "WHO IS SHE THAT LOOKETH FORTH AS THE MORNING, FAIR AS THE MOON, CLEAR AS THE SUN, AND TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS?" The American army had been sold by Arnold. The noble ideal it had cherished, the blood it had given, the bitter hardships it had suffered--torture in the wilderness, famine in the Highlands, long marches of half naked men in mid-winter, massacres at Wyoming and Cherry Valley--all this had been bartered away, like a shipload of turnips, to satisfy the greed of one man. Again thirty pieces of silver! Was a nation to walk the bitter way to its Calvary? Major Andre, the Adjutant-General of Sir Henry Clinton's large force in New York, was with the traitor when he rowed from the ship to the west shore of the Hudson and went into the bush under the observation of Solomon with his spy-glass. Arnold was to receive a command and large pay in the British army. The consideration had been the delivery of maps showing the positions of Washington's men and the plans of his forts and other defenses, especially those of Forts Putnam and Clinton and Battery Knox. Much other information was put in the hands of the British officer, including the prospective movements of the Commander-in-Chief. He was to be taken in the house of the man he had befriended. Andre had only to reach New York with his treasure and Arnold to hold the confidence of his chief for a few days and, before the leaves had fallen, the war would end. The American army and its master mind would be at the mercy of Sir Henry Clinton.