possession of the Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vincent retreats at quick march along the lake shore towards what is now Hamilton. June 1 General Dearborn sends his officers, Chandler and Winder, in hot pursuit with thirty-five hundred men. Vincent's soldiers have less than ninety rounds of powder to a man. He has only one thousand men, for the garrisons of {357} Chippewa and Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in a circle to the region of St. David's. June 5, Vincent's Canadians are in camp at Burlington Bay. Only seven miles away, at Stony Creek, lies the American army, out sentries posted at a church, artillery on a height commanding a field, officers and men asleep in the long grass. Humanly speaking, nothing could prevent a decisive battle the next day. The two American officers, Chandler and Winder, sit late into the night, candles alight over camp stools, mapping out what they think should be the campaign. It is a hot night,--muggy, with June showers lighted up by an occasional flash of sheet lightning. Then all candles out, and pitch darkness, and silence as of a desert! The American army is asleep,--in the dead sleep of men exhausted from long, hard, swift marching. The artillerymen on the hillocks, the sentries, the outposts at the church,--they, too, are sound asleep! [Illustration: FITZGIBBONS] But the Canadians, too, know that, humanly speaking, nothing can prevent a decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run--I do not vouch for their truth, though facts seem to point to some such explanation--that Harvey, a Canadian officer, had come back to the American army that night disguised as a Quaker peddling potatoes, and noted the unguarded condition of the exhausted troops; also that Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through the American lines dressed as a rustic selling butter. Whether these stories are true or not, or whether, indeed, the Canadians knew anything about the American camp, they plucked resolution from desperation. If they waited for the morrow's battle, they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that seven {358} hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. Setting out at 11.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, the Canadians marched in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders that not a shot should be fired, not a word spoken, the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the morning of June 6 the marchers came to the church where the sentries were posted. Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers, who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his place in the grass, hand on pistol.