Brock went on to Kingston and employed the time spent on the schooner, which bore him thither, in writing to his brothers. In the letter which appears to have been addressed to his brother William, he says: “They say that the value of the articles will amount to thirty or forty thousand pounds; in that case my portion will be something considerable. If it enabled me to contribute to your comfort and happiness, I shall esteem it my highest reward. When I returned Heaven thanks for my amazing success, I thought of you all; you appeared to me happy—your late sorrows forgotten; and I felt as if you acknowledged that the many benefits which for a series of years I received from you were not unworthily bestowed. Let me know, my dearest brothers, that you are again united. The want of union was nearly losing this province without even a struggle, and be assured it operates in the same degree in regard to families.” It is well for us that we are able to catch a glimpse of the humanity of this man of action. Neither political success nor failure, neither military advantage nor setback, could exclude from his great heart the thought of the loved ones at home. He joyed in his successes, because they would bring pleasure and possibly more practical gratification to those he loved and who loved him. It was a heavy grief to him that his brothers were estranged. Though he was never to know it they buried their difference. By a strange chance this happened upon the very day of Brock’s glorious death at Queenston. His influence, great in many things, was greater in nothing than in this, the amity and affectionate regard which his brothers came to have for each other. At Kingston, Brock learned that the armistice arranged by Sir George Prevost and General Dearborn had been refused by President Madison. September 8th saw the renewal of hostilities between the two countries. No doubt Sir George had entered into the armistice thinking he acted for the best. He appears to have been moved by his knowledge that the New England and several other States were opposed to the war and also by the fact that the orders in council, which had been the cause of the trouble between the United States and Britain had been repealed. And he may have believed that in attempting to avoid a conflict in America he was relieving Britain of a minor task which was hampering her in her contest with Napoleon. But to the student and reader of later years the armistice was an utterly foolish move. When Brock learned that the armistice had come to an end, he proposed to Prevost that he immediately attack Sackett’s Harbor from Kingston. Again the governor-general said him nay, and Brock, disheartened and annoyed, returned to Fort George there to deal, as best he could, with the threatened invasion at Niagara.