CHAPTER VIII.

THE INSURRECTION.

Roland's heart was brimming with happiness and gratitude for the love and generosity of Aurelia Darnel, and it seemed actually to dance in his breast joyously, when, next morning, the four companies detailed for service marched from Montreal, with the colours flying, the bayonets fixed, and the band playing the old regimental quick-step of the pre-Revolution days, varied by the pipes,--

"Dumbarton's drums beat bonnie O,"

in memory of the Colonel, that loyal and gallant Earl, who followed his royal master into exile and died at St. Germains.

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.

This was the night of the 24th November, and to Roland, like many others, it was a sleepless one, as he commanded an out-picket and had to visit his sentinels every hour.

On one side of his post rolled the mighty river, reflecting in its ripples the star-spangled sky; on the other, stretched away into darkness and utter obscurity the vast dingles of an American forest, planted and grown by nature.

His mind was full of that last evening with Aurelia and all its sweet details. On his odious rival he scarcely bestowed a thought, and he felt happier than an emperor in his palace, as he lay there, with his cloak around him, his sword and pistols at hand, his head pillowed on a pine-log, and all oblivious of the rattlesnakes, which there are six feet long. Near him was Robert Bruce, one of his sentinels, treading softly to and fro, with bayonet fixed, and singing to himself the old Scottish barrackroom ditty:--

"Poor Willie was landed at bonnie Dumbarton, Where the stream from Loch Lomond runs into the sea, While at home in sweet Ireland, he left Mary Martin, With a babe at her breast and a child at her knee."

The night passed in quietude, apart from the alarming sounds mentioned; on the 25th November the march was resumed, and on coming within a mile of St. Charles, puffs of white smoke spirted out of the dark jungly brushwood on the opposite side of the river, as the rebels daringly opened a straggling fire upon Her Majesty's troops. A Royal Scot was struck down by Roland's side, and several were wounded.

Rifle shots were also fired from a barn in front.

"Push on, Logan!" exclaimed Colonel Wetherall; "push on and storm that place at the point of the bayonet!"

Logan advanced with his company at a rush; his powerful arm burst in the door; the place was taken, all in it bayoneted or put to flight, and then it was set in flames, the whole affair occupying little more than the time we take to narrate the episode.

Near St. Charles were more than fifteen hundred insurrectionists under Papineau and Colonel Smash, posted in a strong and closely stockaded work from which they opened a sharp and serious fire, the echoes of which the adjacent forest repeated with a thousand reverberations, while the whole place seemed enveloped in white smoke, streaked with flashes of red fire.

The Royals responded with several rounds well thrown in; but they had stormed too many such, works in Burmah, the land of stockades, to linger in attacking this one.

A breach was beaten in by axe and hammer, and cannon shot together. In three minutes the place was carried by storm and its occupants bayoneted, shot down, or put to flight; but not before seventeen of the Royals, and four of the 66th were killed, and a great number wounded, while Colonel Wetherall and Major Warde had their horses shot under them, and Roland's cheek was grazed by a rifle shot.

The mingled curses and imprecations, yells of agony and rage, seemed to fill the air, when the roar of the firing died away, and the prisoners were disarmed and secured. "Every officer and man behaved nobly," says the dispatch of Colonel Wetherall. "Major Warde carried the right of the position in good style, and Captain George Mark Glasgow's Artillery did good execution; he is a most zealous officer; and Captain David's troop of Montreal Cavalry rendered essential service during the charge."

The murder of stray soldiers from time to time, and particularly that of George Weir, a young lieutenant of the 32nd Cornish Light Infantry, who was bound to a cart, and hacked to pieces with his own sword, by certain miscreants (among whom Ithuriel Smash was supposed to be one), now began to infuse in the minds of the troops much of that rancour which adds to the severity of a civil strife.

After the stockade had been uprooted and destroyed, the troops returned to St. Hilaire and remained in cantonments for three days. There a dragoon of the Montreal Cavalry arrived with the mail, which brought from Aurelia Darnel the first letter she had ever addressed him, and the sight of her hand-writing raised Roland at once to the seventh heaven of delight. We know not whether he kissed it, but think it extremely probable that he did, if no one was near.

As the contents of love-letters are of interest to the recipients thereof alone, and the said contents, with all their half-fatuous endearments and double diminutives, are at times rather grotesque, the reader need not be troubled with that of Aurelia, save in one part thereof.

"I told dearest mamma of all that had passed between us, shewed her our engagement ring, and added, that as soon as leisure permitted, you would write to her on that subject. She was agitated, the dear old soul, and tearful at the fear of losing me; but kissed me many times, and said she was certain we would be happy together, and that she loved you with all her heart. Oh, think of that, Roland! But we shall have mamma to live with us, won't we dearest, when I am your own--your very own? She will be a comfort to us both, and not at all like the proverbial 'mother-in-law' of the novel and play. But I must now conclude, as we are both on the eve of starting for our Seigneury of St. Eustache, where the French people are taking up arms; but they love mamma so much, that she hopes she may prevail upon them to refrain from breaking the Queen's peace. So adieu till I write you from there, dearest, dearest," &c., &c.

And then, of course, there was a postscript, containing "cartloads of kisses."

Had she told Madame Darnel about the long-hidden will and his changed circumstances?

Roland rather supposed not; she was generous and loving enough, in her love and joy to have forgotten all about the matter!

Roland found an entire day's occupation in reading again and again the letter of Aurelia, nor was it fairly consigned to that breast-pocket in his uniform which contained her glove, till the warning drum beat on the 28th, when the troops marched to attack another body of the rebels, who had taken post at Point Oliviere, and had actually constructed there an abatis of felled trees for the purpose of cutting off the retreat of Wetherall's entire force!

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--'"

"Even in the 'Army List?'"

"Yes, and proud was I when first I saw my name there," said Logan.

"Well, whose name is in print now?"

"Yours."

"Mine!" A sickening thought occurred to Roland of the story of the concealed will, Ardgowrie, and the discovered heir or heirs, for though he had schooled himself to face the idea, it was a bitter one; therefore, it was only a relief to his mind to find, that the matter referred to, was the fact that he was favourably mentioned and thanked in General Orders by Sir John Colborne, commanding Her Majesty's forces in Canada. "for his gallantry displayed on the 28th of November last, at the abatis of Point Oliviere."

As he read it he thought of Aurelia, and the pleasure such a notice would afford her; and was carelessly running his eyes over the columns of the paper, when they caught her name--_her name_--and mentioned in a way that made his blood turn alternately cold as ice, and hot as fire!

When proceeding in her sledge, with her daughter Aurelia, Madame Darnel had been stopped and surrounded near her own seigneury "by a band of rebels under the notorious Colonel Smash, for whose arrest a reward is now offered."

The old lady had been subjected to such violence, that she had fainted and been borne to the house of the curé insensible, while her beautiful daughter was brutally carried off by the "Yankee Sympathiser," and was now, if alive, a helpless prisoner in his hands at St. Eustache.

Roland was petrified with grief and dismay by intelligence, so deplorable--so terrible! Logan, full of just anger and great indignation, was speaking to him, but Roland knew not what he said.

The former was recalling the views "the Colonel" had with regard to Aurelia; he recalled, too, his eavesdropping, his rancorous hatred, threats, and jealousy; he recalled, also, the whole character and bearing of the man, and when he thought of the soft, gentle, and beautiful Aurelia being helpless in his power, at such a time, when the whole of Lower Canada was rent by civil dissension, outrage, and bloodshed, and when the Queen's troops were menaced everywhere, the heart of Roland seemed to die within him!

Again and again had Roland thought, while angry pride mingled with love and gratitude, that in marrying Aurelia, he would deprive her of no luxury to which she had been accustomed,--horses and carriages in summer, the sledge in winter, a dressing maid, or the thousand and one little things which wealth can procure, because _she_ had that; but he had longed to make her mistress of Ardgowrie!

Now--now, when he had lost her, perhaps for ever, how pitiful and minor seemed all such considerations.