A hundred times Roland asked himself, why had he not tested the great love of Aurelia before? why had he lost so much time and so much happiness? A little time—the insurrection ended, and he would be by her side again, as he had somewhat needlessly assured her in a passionate little farewell note, dispatched that morning.
A little time? Alas, the first day of absence seemed to consist of at least seventy-two hours!
The force which now took the field by order of Lieutenant General Sir John Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton), G.C.B., Colonel of the Cameronians, a wounded veteran of the Peninsular war, consisted of detachments of the 24th, 32nd, and 66th Regiments, with one howitzer, under the Hon. Colonel Charles Gore, son of the Earl of Arran, and afterwards Deputy Quartermaster-General in Canada, who marched towards St. Denis and St. Charles, with orders to arrest certain armed traitors who were alleged to be in these villages.
At the same time, Colonel Wetherall, with his four companies of the Royal Scots Regiment, Captain David's troop of Montreal Cavalry, a detachment of the 66th, and two six-pounders, was to move on the last-named village to assist a magistrate in executing the warrants.
The month was November, the weather severe, and the roads bad; the men were in heavy marching order, with knapsacks, great coats and blankets, camp-kettles, and with the arms and ammunition of the day, making up a load of seventy-five pounds twelve ounces per man; but all were in the highest spirits. Anything seemed better than moping in barracks, and when the music ceased as they marched "at ease," they made the forests resound to their merry choruses.
All parts of the country thereabout which have not been cleared for cultivation are covered with timber, and he alone, says a traveller, who has visited these regions of interminable forest can form an adequate idea of their dreariness, yet there the red oak, the white pine, the beech, elm, cedar, and maple mingle their branches ad infinitum.
Here and there a lonely clearing was passed, where, amid lofty trees devoid of lateral branches, their stems or stumps scorched and blackened by fire, stood the log hut of a settler, who, with his wild-looking brood, came forth to gaze with wonder, perhaps hostility, at the passing troops.
In autumn these magnificent forests assume hues of every shade—yellow, brown, and red—under sunsets which present the most glorious assemblages of clouds. But winter was the season now; the leaves had fallen; the humming-birds and fire-flies had departed, and the wild fowl had taken refuge on the lakes or the St. Lawrence.
The force under Colonel Wetherall crossed the Richelieu River by the upper ferry at the village of Chambly, where, in the days of the monarchy, the French had a strong palisaded fort; but the nature of the roads and the unfavourable weather seriously impeded his march, while information having reached him that the rebels in arms at St. Charles had been greatly increased in numbers, and had with them a number of lawless American or Yankee "sympathisers," under his late guest, Colonel Smash, whom he remembered at the mess, eating peas with his knife and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; so he made a halt at St. Hilaire, until he could be joined by a fifth company of the 1st Royal Scots under Hector Logan.
On that night it was evident that the country was alarmed. Instead of the stillness usual to the time, the clanging of church bells was heard at intervals, with the barking of dogs, the report of firearms occasionally, the blowing of conches and horns, red alarm-fires blazed up on the dark summits of the distant hills; and more than once horsemen in hot haste dashed past the advanced sentinels without responding to their challenge, and as the troops, as yet, were only acting in support of the civil power, they could not fire upon these strangers.