"That is the right way to talk, colonel; I feel ever so much better now; there is a rope ready for my neck if I fail." The messengers who brought the news from the patriots of Massachusetts were entertained right royally, and took back with them a good impression of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. But it was not an opinion only that they took back with them, for they had an escort of fifty men, and with them were twenty heavy cannon, with good ammunition, and a promise of as many more heavy guns as soon as horses could be procured to haul them. "Tell Gen. Gage, if you see him," said Allen, "that the rope which he has for Sam Adams must be long enough and strong enough for Ethan Allen and his Mountain Boys, for they will never surrender as long as they have strength to shoulder a musket or draw a sword." The day after the men left for Boston a letter from the governor of New Hampshire was received by Allen, ordering him to return home and lay down his sword. To this letter Allen replied: "I will gladly lay down my sword, for I hate fighting, but cannot do so until England recognizes the independence of the colonies or until the people themselves have concluded an honorable peace with Great Britain." Arnold contrived to send a letter to New Hampshire and one to New Haven, in which he reported the "treachery and tyranny of the man Ethan Allen." There is no proof that either of the recipients did anything save throw the letters into the fire. On the following day Baker and Forest returned from New Haven, bearing with them the thanks of the colony to Col. Ethan Allen and Col. Benedict Arnold. The latter containing the thanks of the assembly, engrossed on parchment and sealed with the seal of the colony, placed Allen in the first place, and only mentioned Arnold as a coadjutor. The two emissaries were escorted to Ticonderoga by Col. Hinman and a regiment of Connecticut soldiers. Hinman was commissioned to aid Allen in any way that he could, and to act under his direction. Allen, however, determined on a wider field for himself and men than merely remaining as a garrison of a fort, with the mild excitement of an occasional scrimmage with the enemy when out on a foraging expedition, so he handed over the forts to Col. Hinman, taking a receipt for the same. That curious old document is perhaps the only one in existence of the kind, for it is a receipt for the delivery of the forts of Ticonderoga, Crown Point and Skenesburgh, and is made out much in the same way as a receipt for a few dollars would be. Arnold was to remain with Hinman for a time, but with the lower rank of major. With only a small number of followers, including Seth Warner, Remember Baker, Eben Pike and twenty trusty mountaineers, Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, left the fort and proceeded to Albany. CHAPTER XX. A ROADSIDE ADVENTURE. It was a daring thing to do, but Ethan Allen thought only of his country, and how to benefit the national cause.