"I hope," said Dick, half-lifting his hat as he stood by the corpse, "I can respect a man who did a brave deed and died for his country."
CHAPTER XXVII.
PRÈS-DE-VILLE.
Fifteen years have gone by, and a few months. In December 1775, on the rock of Quebec, Great Britain clung with a last desperate grip upon Canada, which on that September day in 1760 had passed so completely into her hands.
All through December the snow had fallen almost incessantly; and almost incessantly, through the short hours of daylight, the American riflemen, from their lodgings in the suburbs close under the walls, had kept up a fire on the British defenders of Quebec. For the assailants of Great Britain now were her own children; and the man who led them was a British subject still, and but three years ago had been a British officer.
Men see their duty by different lights, but Richard Montgomery had always seen his clearly. He had left the British Army for sufficient cause; had sought America, and married an American wife. He served the cause of political freedom now, and meant to serve it so as to win an imperishable name. The man whom King George had left for ten years a captain had been promoted by Congress Brigadier-General at a stroke. It recognised the greatness of which his own soul had always assured him. "Come what will," he had promised his young wife at parting, "you shall never be ashamed of me." His men adored him for his enthusiasm, his high and almost boyish courage, his dash, his bright self-confidence.
And his campaign had been a triumph. Ticonderoga and Crown Point had fallen before him. He had swept down the Richelieu, capturing St. John's, Chambly, Sorel. Montreal had capitulated without a blow. And so success had swept him on to the cliffs of Quebec—there to dash itself and fail as a spent wave.
He would not acknowledge this; not though smallpox had broken out among his troops and they, remembering that their term of service was all but expired, began to talk of home; not though his guns, mounted on frozen mounds, had utterly failed to batter a way into the city. As a subaltern he had idolised Wolfe, and here on the ground of Wolfe's triumphant stroke he still dreamed of rivalling it. In Quebec a cautious phlegmatic British General sat and waited, keeping, as the moonless nights drew on, his officers ready against surprise. For a week they had slept in their clothes and with their arms beside them.
From the lower town of Quebec a road, altered since beyond recognition, ran along the base of Cape Diamond between the cliff and the river. As it climbed it narrowed to a mere defile, known as Près-de-Ville, having the scarped rock on one hand and on the other a precipice dropping almost to the water's edge. Across this defile the British had drawn a palisade and built, on the edge of the pass above, a small three-pounder battery, with a hangar in its rear to shelter the defenders.