"I'm not dead yet, Bee, and our father gave you to the Edgars, for your grandfather to claim, if he liked, because our mother was English. But who is wanting to marry you?" Bee evaded the question, not feeling ready to tell him of Ned yet. She wondered where he was, fighting for his country, that was half hers, and to clear his name. * * * As for Ned, he was back at Stoney Creek again, hearing that over-cautious commanders had again ordered Vincent to retreat to Kingston, but instead Vincent was staying there, and sending the regiment that Ned had come out with, on the "Lightfoot". Murray, its colonel, was to fortify Twenty-mile Creek (now St. Catherines) and do all he could to "annoy the enemy" then holding Niagara. Ferguson would go with the regiment, and the people of Stoney Creek, who had grown very attached to the soldier-preacher, and who thought Murray's advance foolhardy, as the Americans had six thousand in Niagara, came to church, to hear, as one pessimist said--"Mr. Ferguson preach his own funeral sermon." Ferguson had overheard the words, and he repeated them as he stood, for the last time, in his scarlet regimentals, in the pulpit at Stoney Creek. Then he added in a voice that rang with all the power of a strong man's faith: "You may hear of George Ferguson falling on the field, but he will not be dead. You have it from his own lips that all is well with him. The sting of death is removed, and I know that if this tabernacle of my body be dissolved, I have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens." * * * Murray, carefully reckless, did annoy the enemy very much. McClure who commanded at Niagara, demanded more men to crush the enemy who was continually attacking his foraging parties. The American newspapers loudly declared that "It is a mistake to keep the war in Upper Canada. We could take Lower Canada without soldiers. We have only to lead officers into the lower province, and the disaffected people will rise round our standard." Winter came early that year and two armies were preparing to invade Lower Canada. Hampton, with five thousand men, was ordered to bring stores by way of Lake Champlain and meet Wilkinson. This last general, with nine thousand men, was to run the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and make a dash for Montreal. Kingston would not dare, they thought, to diminish her scanty garrison by sending men down the river. Lake Champlain had been stripped of troops to aid Upper Canada, and Montreal had only a few hundred regulars. Every thing depended on the Lower Canada militia. Late that October the French-Canadians came out. They blocked every road that Hampton could take, and at Chateauguay, under De Salaberry, on October twenty-fifth, an army entirely of militia and Indians ambushed in the woods, so demoralized Hampton's army, that he decided it was impossible to get through with his heavy baggage, and retreated.