At length, after three hours desperate struggle, a hostile force of six thousand men stood upon the plain. The conflict then was brief but strenuous. Many were the incidents of personal heroism that relieved, as by a gleam of light, the darkness of the tragedy. Jonas Evans was in the foremost files, and, as they lay upon the ground, his comrade on either side was killed by round shot from the ships, but, as if he bore a charmed life, he escaped unhurt. Loker and McKay, while bearing off a wounded militia-man, were captured, as were many others. At length the bugles sounded a retreat. Slowly and reluctantly the British troops fell back through the town. A strong rear-guard halted in the streets, seeking the shelter of the houses, and stubbornly holding the foe at bay while Vincent made his preparations for abandoning Fort George. All that valour and fidelity could do to hold that important post had been done. But how were a few hundred weary and defeated men to withstand a victorious army of six-fold greater strength? [Footnote: The details of the account above given were narrated to the author by the venerable Father Brady, for many years class-leader of the Methodist Church at Niagara, who was an actor in the events described.] The guns of the fort were spiked and overthrown, and baggage, ammunition, and moveable stores were hastily loaded on teams volunteered for the service, to accompany the retreat of the army. With a bitter pang, Vincent ordered the destruction of the fort which he had so gallantly defended. When the last man had retired, with his own hand he fired the train which caused the explosion of the powder magazine. When the victorious army marched in, they found only the breached and blackened walls, the yawning gates, and dismantled ramparts of the fort. From the shattered flagstaff, where it still waved defiantly, though rent and seared by shot and shell, the brave red-cross flag was hauled down and replaced by the gaily fluttering stars and stripes. Many a time has the present writer wandered over the crumbling and grass-grown ramparts of the ruined fort, where the peaceful sheep crop the herbage and the little children play. Some of the old casemates and thick-walled magazines still remain, and are occupied by the families of a few old pensioners. In these low- vaulted chambers, with their deep and narrow embrasures, once the scene of the rude alarum of war, often has he held a quiet religious service with the lowly and unlettered inmates, who knew little of the thrilling history of their strange abode. Often at the pensive sunset hour, reclining in a crumbling bastion, has he tried to rehabilitate the past, and to summon from their lonely and forgotten graves upon the neighbouring battlefield, or in quiet church-yards, it may be, far beyond the sea, the groups of war-scarred veterans who once peopled the now desolate fort.