Roland's heart was brimming with happiness and gratitude for the love and generosity of Aurelia Darnel, and it seemed actually to dance in his breast joyously, when, next morning, the four companies detailed for service marched from Montreal, with the colours flying, the bayonets fixed, and the band playing the old regimental quick-step of the pre-Revolution days, varied by the pipes,-- "Dumbarton's drums beat bonnie O," in memory of the Colonel, that loyal and gallant Earl, who followed his royal master into exile and died at St. Germains. A hundred times Roland asked himself, why had he not tested the great love of Aurelia before? why had he lost so much time and so much happiness? A little time--the insurrection ended, and he would be by her side again, as he had somewhat needlessly assured her in a passionate little farewell note, dispatched that morning. A little time? Alas, the first day of absence seemed to consist of at least seventy-two hours! The force which now took the field by order of Lieutenant General Sir John Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton), G.C.B., Colonel of the Cameronians, a wounded veteran of the Peninsular war, consisted of detachments of the 24th, 32nd, and 66th Regiments, with one howitzer, under the Hon. Colonel Charles Gore, son of the Earl of Arran, and afterwards Deputy Quartermaster-General in Canada, who marched towards St. Denis and St. Charles, with orders to arrest certain armed traitors who were alleged to be in these villages. At the same time, Colonel Wetherall, with his four companies of the Royal Scots Regiment, Captain David's troop of Montreal Cavalry, a detachment of the 66th, and two six-pounders, was to move on the last-named village to assist a magistrate in executing the warrants. The month was November, the weather severe, and the roads bad; the men were in heavy marching order, with knapsacks, great coats and blankets, camp-kettles, and with the arms and ammunition of the day, making up a load of seventy-five pounds twelve ounces per man; but all were in the highest spirits. Anything seemed better than moping in barracks, and when the music ceased as they marched "at ease," they made the forests resound to their merry choruses. All parts of the country thereabout which have not been cleared for cultivation are covered with timber, and he alone, says a traveller, who has visited these regions of interminable forest can form an adequate idea of their dreariness, yet there the red oak, the white pine, the beech, elm, cedar, and maple mingle their branches _ad infinitum_. Here and there a lonely clearing was passed, where, amid lofty trees devoid of lateral branches, their stems or stumps scorched and blackened by fire, stood the log hut of a settler, who, with his wild-looking brood, came forth to gaze with wonder, perhaps hostility, at the passing troops.