The notes of a bugle rang out across the river. A fresh force of about thirty other veterans of European battlefields hurried quickly over the stream to join their comrades. Awed by the apparition of so many arms and uniforms, the North-Westers abandoned further resistance, and bloodshed was happily averted. Those who had refused obedience to the Earl's commands were seized and taken forcibly to the boats, the others submitting peaceably to arrest. [Illustration: Meeting of the Nor'-Westers at Fort William, 1816] Fort William and the Nor'-Westers, together with about two hundred French Canadians and half-breeds, and sixty or seventy Iroquois Indians in and about the fort, had been captured by Lord Selkirk. He had become possessed, to use his own words, "of a fort which had served, the last of any in the British dominions, as an asylum for banditti and murderers, and the receptacle for their plunder; a fort which nothing less than the express and special licence of his Majesty could authorise subjects to hold; a fort which had served as the capital and seat of government to the traitorously assumed sovereignty of the North-West; a fort whose possession could have enabled the North-West {285} Company to have kept back all evidence of their crimes." The heads of the evil-doing were summoned to stand their trial in the east. But the Nor'-Westers were bitter against the Earl who had dared to plant a colony in the midst of their hunting grounds. "That canting rascal and hypocritical villain, Lord Selkirk, has got possession of our post at Fort William," wrote one of the aggrieved partners. "Well, we will have him out of that fort," he pursued amiably, "as the Hudson's Bay knaves shall be cleared, bag and baggage, out of the North-West." But although no man was destined to see this part of their prophecy fulfilled, yet Lord Selkirk, a few weeks later, evacuated Fort William. No sooner had the Earl and his forces left this great post than the sheriff of Upper Canada arrived, took possession of the fort and the Nor'-Westers, and restored it to its original owners. Afterwards Imperial commissioners appointed in the name of the Prince Regent to restore law and order to the region went on to Red River, whither Lord Selkirk had repaired. Law and order were, however, not so easily restored. The rivalry between the fur-traders was too strong, the memory of bloodshed too recent for perfect peace to be established in a few weeks or months.