"Pretty bad news, Mr. Edgar. Them blamed Yankees got across Niagara river before daylight on October thirteenth. While our boys were beating them off at Queenston, a lot more sneaked up the mountain, took our battery there, and dug themselves some real smart trenches, then fired down on us. The York 'Gazette' said they were 'villainous aggressors', and there were a thousand of them." "You red-headed blockhead," shouted Edgar. "Do you mean to say we're half-masting our flags because we're invaded?" "Now don't get mad, Mr. Edgar," said the imperturbable Archy. "We're not invaded. General Brock started up to rout them out, but the firing was too hot. It's durned difficult to run up a mountain with sharpshooters firing at you from behind logs and earthworks. He went back, but only to try the other side with a lot of redcoats. He passed our boys, and he said, 'Forward, York Volunteers', and you can bet them volunteers did go forward." "I see," said Edgar with sarcastic resignation. "We won Queenston Heights, and then put all our flags at half-mast." "I meant, Mr. Edgar, that General Brock was shot dead as they charged the second time, and the boys had to go back. That's why the Yankees are calling it their victory, though General Sheaffe took command. He had fifteen hundred men, half of them Mohawk Indians, and they went up the heights in three parties, and smashed the Yankee lines. The 'Gazette' said 'Our unprincipled neighbours were totally defeated', but we hereabouts are only thinking that General Brock is dead." * * * So Ned heard the story of Queenston Heights, a fight which the American histories record as a "frontier skirmish of no importance but on the whole in favour of the Americans," while Canada lauds it as her great victory, on each 13th of October raising the flags on her schools and telling her children how Brock died. His ringing last command, Toronto has taken as her watchword--"Forward, York Volunteers!" And in reality, the American invasion was little more than a reconnoitre--a test of the strength of the enemy, and its repulse was nothing in comparison to Canada's loss in Brock's death at that time. Yet we do well to count it a victory, for that tall granite shaft--Brock's monument on Queenston Heights--overlooking the gorge of wild Niagara, is Canada's declaration of independence. When our gray-coated militia charged up the heights beside the scarlet-clad English regulars, we affirmed that this North American continent was large enough for the growth of two nations and the flying of two flags.