But when the Royals came in sight, with their brass-drums beating and fixed bayonets gleaming bright and keen in the cold winter sun, and deployed from the line of march with coolness and confidence into companies for attack, after exchanging a few shots, the rebels lost all heart, and fled, with the loss of their cannon, which Roland captured at the head of his company, sword in hand, together with twenty-five prisoners, and then rescued his captain, a brave fellow, who in the first advance got entangled among the branches of the abatis and ran thus the serious risk of being shot down helpless; and for all this, Roland was elaborately and honourably mentioned in Colonel Wetherall's dispatch to Sir John Colborne.
On the same day the Colonel's force returned to Chambly with the captured guns and prisoners; but though elated by their success every officer and man was suffering greatly from the heavy and chill rain which turned into mud the wretched roads that were already knee-deep in snow.
Meanwhile tidings reached them that the Queen's forces, under Colonel Gore, had encountered such formidable obstruction, and opposition, and, moreover, endured so much from the severity of the Canadian winter, which had set in with all its bitterness, that they had been compelled to fall back from St. Denis, and retire.
Marching was now laborious work, for when frost came, the troops had to wear creepers, or plates of spikes strapped to their feet.
The snow lay so deep that one might almost imagine no power of the sun would ever melt it; and, at times, when the leafless trees are coated on every branch and twig with ice, whole forests seem to be turned into crystal, when the rays of light produce ten thousand prisms, and most wonderful is the effect if there is a slight breeze to set them in motion.
Wetherall had partially, by his great success, arrested the rebellion in his own quarter; but it was in all its strength elsewhere, and the troops had many severe and harassing duties to perform amid the frost and snow of a very severe winter. It has justly been said that the British officer is essentially a dandy, that "the neatly and closely cropped hair, the well-trimmed mustache, the set up figure, the spotless gloves, boots bright as a mirror, and the general air of dandyism are the outward symbols of those qualities which make men good soldiers."
It no doubt is so. The set up figure remained, but in Canada at that particular juncture, the dandyism had nearly departed, as much as it did in the Crimea.
Amid these duties, Roland could have no letters from Aurelia; neither could he write, for the postal arrangements were completely suspended, or could only be carried on by parties of armed men.
At last there came a day—one of horror—and Roland never forgot it!
"Look here, old fellow," said Logan, with a bright expression on his handsome face, bringing him a copy of the Montreal Gazette some weeks old; "as Byron says, 'pleasant 'tis to see one's name in print—'"