A warrant having been issued to search for and secure the North-West papers, seals were in due course put upon these and guards placed for their security. The arrested men were transported to the Earl's camp; but upon their pledging their word of honour that no further attempt should be made to obstruct the execution of the law, and that all hostile measures should be renounced, they were permitted that same night to return to their apartments at Fort William. Notwithstanding this, it was discovered next morning that the seals had been broken in several places, and that many letters and papers had been burnt in the kitchen in the course of the night. More than this, a canoe loaded with arms and ammunition had been launched and several barrels of gunpowder had been secretly conveyed from the fort. These were afterwards traced to a place of concealment amongst some brushwood close at hand. About fifty or sixty stand of Indian guns, to all appearance freshly loaded and primed, were found hidden under some hay in a barn adjoining the fort. Owing to these discoveries, and suspecting treachery on the part of the Canadians and Indians, the greater part of the latter were ordered to evacuate the premises and pitch their tents on the opposite side of the river. Having seen this carried out, and having secured all the canoes of the enemy, Selkirk and his party came over and pitched their tents in front of the fort and mounted guard. Soon after, the North-West prisoners were sent off under escort to York, and finally reached Montreal in a state of mind not difficult to conceive. Fort William had been captured by Lord Selkirk. He himself, writing in 1817, observes, that "in the execution of his duty as a Magistrate," he had become possessed of "a fort which had served, the last of any in the British dominions, as an asylum for banditti and murderers, and the receptacle for their plunder. A fort which nothing less than the express and special license of his Majesty could authorize subjects to hold. A fort which had served as the capital and seat of Government to the traitorously assumed sovereignty of the North-West. A fort whose possession could have enabled the North-West company to have kept back all evidence of their crimes." "Heretofore," exclaims the Earl, "those who in the execution of the laws obtained possession of such strongholds as served for the retreat of banditti or murderers, were considered to have rendered a national service, and were rewarded with public gratitude and thanks." It can hardly be supposed that either the Canadians or the North-West partners were animated by any such sentiments.