ommand and had nothing
to offer but his services; which in his actual situation were scarcely
worth buying.

{Footnote 1: [Major Andre was born in London in 1751, but his parents
were of Geneva, Switzerland, where he was educated. He was designed
for mercantile life, and entered a London counting-house, the sober
routine of which, however, was so distasteful to him that he soon
abandoned it for the army. An engagement in his eighteenth year to a
beautiful girl, Miss Honora Sneyd, which the father of the young lady
broke off, is said to have been one cause of this step. He came to
America in 1774 as lieutenant of the Royal Fusiliers. His temper was
light and festive, and his varied, graceful talents, and his engaging
manners rendered him generally popular.]}

In the meantime the circumstances of Arnold were daily becoming more
desperate. Debts were accumulating, and creditors becoming more and
more importunate as his means to satisfy them decreased. The public
reprimand he had received was rankling in his mind, and filling his
heart with bitterness. Still he hesitated on the brink of absolute
infamy, and attempted a half-way leap. Such was his proposition to M.
de Luzerne to make himself subservient to the policy of the French
government, on condition of receiving a loan equal to the amount of
his debts. It was his last card before resorting to utter treachery.
Failing in it, his desperate alternative was to get some important
command, the betrayal of which to the enemy might obtain for him a
munificent reward. Such was the secret of his eagerness to obtain the
command of West Point, the great object of British and American
solicitude, on the possession of which were supposed by many to hinge
the fortunes of the war.

He took command of the post and its dependencies about the beginning
of August, fixing his head-quarters at Beverley, a country-seat a
little below West Point, on the opposite or eastern side of the river.
It was commonly called the Robinson House, having formerly belonged to
Colonel Beverley Robinson. Colonel Robinson was a royalist; had
entered into the British service, and was now residing in New York,
and Beverley with its surrounding lands had been confiscated.

From this place Arnold carried on a secret correspondence with Major
Andre. Their letters still in disguised hands, and under the names of
Gustavus and John Anderson, purported to treat merely of commercial
operations, but the real matter