To the sterling public virtues he boasted, Simon Girty united that of loyalty in no common degree. A more staunch adherent to the British crown existed nowhere in the sovereign's dominions; and such was his devotedness to "King George," that, albeit he could not in all possibility have made the sacrifice of his love for whiskey, he would willingly have suffered his left arm to be severed from his body, had such proof of his attachment to the throne been required. Proportioned to his love for everything British, arose, as a natural consequence, his dislike for everything anti-British; and especially for those who under the guise of allegiance, had conducted themselves in a way to become objects of suspicion to the authorities. A near neighbor of Desborough, he had watched him as narrowly as his long indulged habits of intoxication would permit, and he had been the means of conveying to Major Grantham much of the information which had induced that uncompromising magistrate to seek the expulsion of the dangerous settler--an object which, however, had been defeated by the perjury of the unprincipled individual, in taking the customary oaths of allegiance. Since the death of Major Grantham, for whom, notwithstanding his numerous lectures, he had ever entertained that reverential esteem which is the result of the ascendancy of the powerful and virtuous mind over the weak, and not absolutely vicious--and for whose sons he felt almost a fatherly affection--old Girty had but indifferently troubled himself about Desborough, who was fully aware of what he had previously done to detect and expose him, and consequently repaid with usury--an hostility of feeling which, however, had never been brought to any practical issue. As a matter of course, Simon was of the number of anxious persons collected on the bank of the river, on the morning of the capture of the American gun-boat; but, as he was only then emerging from his first stage of intoxication (which we have already shown to be tantamount to perfect sobriety in any other person), there had been no time for a display of those uproarious qualities which characterized the last, and which, once let loose, scarcely even the presence of the General could have restrained. With an acuteness, however, which is often to be remarked in habitual drunkards at moments when their intellect is unclouded by the confusedness to which they are more commonly subject, the hawk's eye of the old man had detected several particulars which had escaped the general attention, and of which he had, at a later period of the day, retained sufficient recollection to connect with an accidental, yet important discovery.