He snatched a paper from beneath a stone on his table. “Wants me arrested for ‘following crimes’—hm, hm,—‘subjecting him to serve in an inferior rank’—inferior rank! The muddle-headed blunderer! Listen—‘for permitting smallpox to spread before Quebec’—who does he think I am? God, able to stop smallpox from spreading? He wants me tried for ‘plundering the inhabitants of Montreal to the eternal disgrace of the Continental Army’—I suppose if he’d been in command he’d sat still and let his men starve—and here’s a gem: ‘for giving unjustifiable, cruel and bloody orders, directing the inhabitants of whole villages to be put to death by fire and sword, without distinction to friend or foe, age or sex.’ ”

He looked purely exasperated. “That probably refers to the time I ordered De Haas to run the Indians out of Canasadauga for being a party to the murder of four prisoners at the Cedars: that must be what he means, the jackass!

“And here’s the climax: I was guilty of ‘great misconduct from the camp at Cambridge until I was superseded by General Montgomery at Pointe aux Trembles, near Quebec!’ God knows what that means! Maybe somebody told him I was misconducting myself when I got my feet wet crossing the Height of Land, and had the indescribable carelessness to let myself get shot in the leg when we stormed Quebec!

“Those things don’t sound like Brown to me! Somebody’s been filling Brown with lies, up to the muzzle. They sound more like that Frenchman in Quebec who made us think Natanis was a spy, so we’d shoot him instead of using him for a guide. We damned near did it, too!”

“Who was that?” I asked.

Arnold put his papers back beneath the stone and half rose to peer toward the upper end of Valcour—looking, evidently, for the Revenge. “Oh, it’s not he! He’s dead! Clever, he was, too; but he miscalculated Nason’s powers. Guerlac, his name was. Didn’t Nason ever tell you about Guerlac?”

I shook my head.

“No,” Arnold said, “I suppose not. I suppose he wouldn’t. There was a woman in it—one he’d never talk about. Well, it couldn’t be Guerlac, because Nason killed him. That’s who it sounds like, though. I’d give a good deal to find out what’s behind all this!”