Next afternoon comes a Hudson’s Bay messenger from Selkirk asking for McGillivray. McLoughlin and Kenneth MacKenzie accompany McGillivray across the river. One hour passes; two hours! The women, watching from the loft windows above the trapdoor, began to hope that a truce had been arranged. At seven in the evening the partners had come from the watchtower to shut the gates when two boat loads of some sixty soldiers glide up to the wharf. Fraser and Alex McDonell and old drunken Daniel MacKenzie rush to slam the gates shut. One leaf is banged when a bugle sounds! Captain D’Orsonnens of the soldiers, shouts “To arms, to arms,” plants his foot in the gateway and with flourishing sword rushes his men into the courtyard “with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, shouting, cursing, swearing death and destruction to all persons.” One Nor’Wester rushes to ring an alarm bell. The others have dashed for their apartments to destroy papers. In a twinkling, Selkirk’s men have captured every cannon in Fort William and are knocking at the doors of the central building. Not a gun has been fired; not a blow struck; not a drop of blood shed; but the trampling feet terrify the women in the attic. They crowd above the trapdoor to hold it down, when, presto! the only tragedy of the semi-farce takes place! The crowding is too much for the trapdoor. Down it crashes spilling the women into the room below, just as the astonished De Meurons dash into the apartment to seal all desks and papers. It is a question whether the soldiers or the women received the greater shock; but the greatest surprise of all is across the river where the three Northwest partners are received by Selkirk between lines of armed soldiers and are promptly arrested, bail refused, for complicity in the massacre of Seven Oaks. Selkirk allows them to go back to the fort on parole for the night and orders the liberation of those Hudson’s Bay prisoners in the butter-vat prison--Lajimoniere and the survivors of Seven Oaks, who tell my lord a tale that sharpens his vengeance. The night passes in alarm. Soldiers on guard at the room of each partner detect the Nor’Westers burning papers that might be used as evidence; and the loaded muskets are found in the hay loft; and furs are discovered stamped R. R.--H. B. C.--which have been rifled from some Hudson’s Bay post.