The parchment was his brevet as brigadier-general in His Majesty’s Army, and I hastened to improve the shining hour for another gentle stuffing of his vanity. Rising quickly from my chair, I stood at attention before him, gave him the graceful British salute in my best style, and said, with a true Virginia bow to go with the words: “Let me be the first to congratulate you, General Arnold.” He tried to laugh it off, tossing the document carelessly upon the writing-table, and calling it a bauble which wise men valued at its true worth. But the gratified smile was still playing fitfully across his face even as he spoke; and in a little while he left me, going to the alcove at the farther end of the long room, where a new uniform was laid out carefully upon the bed. His viewing of his finery set me to thinking of my own needs in that direction. As Arnold’s aide, I must have a captain’s uniform, and I was the more anxious to hasten it because it would give me an excuse to carry serviceable weapons, which my civilian’s clothes did not. So I broached this subject to my lord Lucifer Judas when he came back to my end of the room, and said I should be ashamed to serve a general in my citizen’s garmentings, and that I hoped my service was to begin at once. There was no dispute upon this point, Arnold seeming to be as eager to have a bedecked-out captain to tag him around the town, as I was eager to be the tag. And now it appeared that he had overshot the mark in his quartermaster’s stores, having, as he assured me, several more outfittings than he had officers, and among these possibly a captain’s. Hence, I was shortly afterward sent to the legion barracks with an order for my bedizenry, and a second order upon the regimental tailor to cut and alter and fit the same for me that I might report to General Arnold in full panoply by six o’clock at the latest. I went willingly enough, being glad to escape from the company of a man who stirred up all the evil I ever owned and made my fingers itch to lay hold of him. And because the afternoon was half spent when I began, and because the fussy little Dutch tailorman had to measure and fit and try and measure again, I lost another chance of finding John Champe, and thereby sealed his fate as well as my own, as will appear a little farther on. Since I was ordered to report to Arnold at six o’clock, I had an early supper at my tavern, and expected to miss Castner. But he came in and sat down at my table before I was through, and I was sure I saw scorn in his honest blue eyes for my new plumage. “I like you better otherwise,” he said, when I had laughingly given him leave to open his mind. “I hate to see you in that--gentleman’s livery.” “What!” I retorted; “after I have told you how emphatically it fits me?” “Yes; even after that.” “Well,” said I; “I hope you may never have to wear it, Mr. Castner, since you dislike it so warmly.”