During this period of discomfort in the camp, intelligence began to come, through the inhabitants, of the state of affairs in Quebec. General Carleton, the governor, was away, up the St. Lawrence, perhaps directing movements against the army from New York, somewhere in the vicinity of Montreal. But the defences were being strengthened and the garrison reinforced, under the direction of the lieutenant-governor, Caramhe, and of the veteran Colonel Maclean, who had returned from Sorel with the Royal Highland Emigrants, three hundred Scotchmen enlisted by him at Quebec. Recruits had come also from Nova Scotia and elsewhere. Quebec had observed the colonial troops camped between woods and river, and the military and official people despised and laughed at them. The merchants and business folk disliked Governor Carleton for his affiliation exclusively with the official and military classes and the old French aristocracy, but would nevertheless stand stanchly for English rule and the defence of the city. The French seigneurs, reconciled to the treaty of 1763, had no reason to desire a change of government, and it was likely that the priesthood, the artisans, and the peasants would be neutral save when favoring the winning side. Such reports helped to furnish camp talk, and Dick was as interested in it as any one was, but the walled town that loomed high across the wide river had for him another interest. He would stand gazing at it by the hour, wondering in what part of it she was, and what would be the manner of his first sight of her. When he saw young Burr, of Arnold's staff, set forth in a sledge, and in a priest's disguise, from a friendly monastery, at a distance from the camp, with a guide, Dick promptly guessed the mission, the bearing of word from Arnold to the New York army; and for once Dick did not envy another a task of peril, for Dick preferred now to remain near Quebec. Four days after the army's arrival at Point Levi, there came at last a messenger from General Montgomery, whom Schuyler's illness had left in supreme command of the expedition from New York Province. His news set the camp cheering. The town of St. John's, which the British had retaken after Arnold's capture of it, had fallen to Montgomery on the 3d of November, after a siege of seven weeks. The New York general was to have proceeded thence to Montreal, capture that town, and come down the river to join Arnold. On top of these inspiriting tidings, came the joyfully exciting orders to make ready for an immediate crossing of the river.