but it’s all true about the way we came home on horseback, and with plug hats, too, and in fact with anything we could lay our hands on. There was a great deal of talk about it, I believe; but Sir John made us return the things afterwards. One big fellow, at Beauharnois, saw a beautiful sofa going into the fire, so he seized it and said he would have it. He heaved it out, but losh, man, when the orders came to march on to Montreal he didn’t know what to do with it, and had to chuck it into the river. We were two weeks in Montreal, and we stood guard at the executions. It was a dreadful sight to see men hung up in a row, all dropped at once. Yes, there was a ‘movable gallows,’ and a very tidy thing it was. It was put up in an hour, and when the execution was over, the Colonel said, ‘Go drill those men;’ when we came back, in an hour, there was no sign of it left. An attempt at rescue was feared, and they said Papineau himself was there to see--a tall, middling stout man, a regular Frenchman, and they _said_ it was Papineau. We were well treated, fed whenever there was anything to eat, and properly paid at the end. So Sir John came to the barracks one morning, and says he, ‘You Glengarries can go now, for all the good you are!’ And that was just what we wanted.” “The ghost of a goose is a curious sight, A strange enough phantom at best,” but when it is that of a military goose, and history records not whether goose or gander, biography becomes delicate writing. In ’37, not only were men warlike and women sympathetic, but the very geese flew to arms. “Confoun’ a’ questions o’ dates,” says the _Noctes_; confoun’ a’ questions o’ sex--the goose of the Coldstream Guards must not be forgotten; the black-coated laity thought they possessed many such. This lineal descendant of the fabulous Roman bird was born and brought up in the citadel at Quebec, which may be the reason that it despised the estate of _oie des moissons_ and aspired to that of _anser ruficollis_ upon a battlefield. One day, in its morning walk on that historic ground, it left the flock forever, stepped up to the sentry, paced back and forth with him on his beat, gravely ducking at every arch, and when rain came on and he turned into the sentry-box goosie got in too, poked out her head, and kept at attention until the corporal came with the relief. The ensuing ceremony met with her approbation, as did the new guard; she gave one last look at the retreating figure, and began her walk up and down with the new. Thereafter, the sentry order always finished, “In case of fire alarm the guard, _and take care of the goose_.” ’Twould offend against taste in ordinary cases “To tell how poor goosie was put out of pain (And the plucking and basting we need not explain);”