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“Sir,” indignantly interrupted Morton, “I am no spy. My uniform shows I am an officer of the King’s army and I came upon American soil engaged in lawful warfare, declared not by King George but by your own government. I am a prisoner-of-war but no spy.”

“It is undoubted that you consorted with Indians, that you were present with them in the childish attempt to surprise my army the other evening, and that you were with one or more redskins when Major Slocum offered up his life on the altar of his country in a manner that befitted so celebrated a patriot, who to his laurels as a statesman had added those of a soldier. You must understand, for you appear to be a man of parts and education, that Indians and those who associate with them are not recognized as entitled to the rights of war. They are shot or hung as barbarous murderers without trial.”

“If that is your law, General, how comes it that you have Indians in your army?”

The General looked nonplussed for a moment. “Our Indians,” he answered, “are not in the same category. They have embraced the allegiance of a free government; yours are wild wretches, refugees from our domain and fugitives from our justice, and now the minions of a bloody despotism.”