In this respect General Arnold was not a strong man. If he had acted upon himself wholly from without, as if he were not himself, and had cultivated a spirit of humility and abnegation of self, together with a considerateness and softness of manner towards those at whose hands he had suffered, he would have stifled his pangs of wounded pride and self-love, and emerged a victor over himself in the contest. He might have recognized his own imperfections to a tolerable degree which would have disinclined him to censoriousness, not to say rashness. By maintaining an evenness of temper and equality of spirits during the days of his sore affliction, he might have reconsidered his decisions of haste and ultimate disaster, and be led to the achievement of newer and nobler triumphs. But he did not. Instead he gave way at once to a violence of anger which was insurmountable. There was engendered within him feelings of revenge of the most acrid nature. His self-love had been humiliated and crushed before the eyes of a garrulous world. His vanity and his prestige had been ground in the dust. There was no consideration save the determination for an immediate and effectual revenge. "Don't worry, my dear," Peggy had whispered to him on the way home. "Try not to think of it." "Think of it?... God! I'll show them. They'll pay for this." Apart from that he had not spoken to her during the entire journey. Morose, sullen, brutal, he had nursed his anger until his countenance fairly burned from the tension within. He slammed the door with violence; he tore the epaulets from his shoulders and threw them beyond the bed; he ripped his coat and kicked it across the floor. No! He would not eat. He wanted to be alone. Alone with himself, alone with his wrath, alone with his designs for revenge. "The cowards! And I trusted them." He could not understand his guilt. There was no guilt, only the insatiable lust on the part of his enemies for vengeance. The execution came first, then the trial. There was no accusation; he had been condemned from the start. The public, at whose hands he had long suffered, who reviled and oppressed him with equal vehemence, who had elevated him to the topmost niche of glory, and as promptly crumbled the column beneath his feet and allowed him to crash to the ground, now gloated over their ruined and heartbroken victim with outrageous jubilation. They were on destruction bent, and he the victim of their stupid spite.