The bells were distinctly heard at Gallows Hill. An occasional shot, fired at random yet startling, pierced these impromptu chimes. The rumours of the streets condensed at rallying points, where people told of the rattle of Powell’s horse’s hoofs as he made his mad gallop from Mackenzie to Head; of how hundreds, soon thousands, were at Gallows Hill, ready to descend upon them; of how the city was defenceless, and would the speaker and his friend enrol for its defence or not; how the generally staid persons of the Chief-Justice and Judges Macaulay and McLean, unusually excited, were seen with muskets on their shoulders; how the third judge, Jonas Jones, was losing not a moment to get some thirty volunteers to remain on guard at the toll gate on Yonge Street for the night; how such young fellows as Henry Sherwood, James Strachan, John Beverley Robinson, jun., were galloping about as aides, appointed in a moment and eager in their master’s service; all were on the alert, keeping vigil to a day of uproar and excitement. At the market-house the Governor found assembled the force on which he had to depend. It was not long before he was aware that one, at least, was armed. A ball whistled through the room where he was closeted in earnest talk with Judge Jones, and stuck in the wall close beside them. Men, brimful of loyalty and agitation, were seen parading hurriedly in front of the City Hall, a musket on either shoulder, hungering for an enemy and afraid that he might come. At sunrise Colonel FitzGibbon rode out to reconnoitre the position of the invaders, and reported that they numbered some five hundred men, a half-armed rabble without competent leader or discipline--a fit sequel to that “volume of shreds and patches,” the grievance book; a set of stragglers in an unfortified position. At eight, Sir Francis and his comrades at the City Hall, after a nap taken on the floor, rose to inspect and to be inspected, a group almost as sorry in military appearance as the one reported on by FitzGibbon. The Governor had a short double-barrelled gun in his belt and another on his shoulder; as a kind of twin or complement to him, the Chief-Justice was armed with thirty rounds of ball cartridge. Sir Francis made a brief but animated address, to which the assemblage returned three cheers. A few days before he had “requested an officer” to strengthen the fort lying west of the city; accordingly, its earthworks were surrounded by a double line of palisades, the barracks were loopholed, the magazine stockaded, and a company of Toronto militia lodged there. But as “a commander without troops,” the market-house--full of men, with its two six-pounders “completely filled with grape shot,” furnished with four thousand stand of arms, bayonets, belts and ball cartridge, brought from the depot at Kingston shortly before--was more to Sir Francis’ mind than the empty fort would have been. Besides which, he states in