A smile passed over Pike's face. When the surgeon looked again, the commander was dead. For twenty-four hours the haggle went on as to terms of capitulation. Within that time, two or three things occurred to inflame the invading troops. They learned that Sheaffe had slipped away; as the American general's report put it, "They got the shell, but the kernel of the nut got away." They learned that stores had been destroyed after the surrender had been granted. Without more restraint, and in defiance of orders, the American troops gave themselves up to plunder all that night. In their rummaging through the Parliament buildings they found hanging above the Speaker's chair what Canadian records declare was a _wig_, what American reports say was a _human scalp_ sent in by some ranger from the west. From what I have read in the private papers of fur traders {355} in that period regarding international scalping, I am inclined to think that wig may have been an American scalp. Certainly, the fur traders of Michilimackinac wrapped no excuses round their savagery when the canoes all over the coasts of Lake Superior, in lieu of flags, had American scalps flaunting from their prows. At all events, word went out that an American scalp had been found above the Speaker's chair. It was night. The troops were drunk with success and perhaps with the plunder of the wine shops. All that night and all the next day and night the skies were alight with the flames of Toronto's public buildings on fire. Also, the army chest with ten thousand dollars in gold, which Sheaffe had forgotten, was dug up on pain of the whole town being fired unless the money were delivered. Private houses were untouched. Looted provisions which the fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders distributed among the poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners on parole not to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for Niagara.