In autumn these magnificent forests assume hues of every shade--yellow, brown, and red--under sunsets which present the most glorious assemblages of clouds. But winter was the season now; the leaves had fallen; the humming-birds and fire-flies had departed, and the wild fowl had taken refuge on the lakes or the St. Lawrence. The force under Colonel Wetherall crossed the Richelieu River by the upper ferry at the village of Chambly, where, in the days of the monarchy, the French had a strong palisaded fort; but the nature of the roads and the unfavourable weather seriously impeded his march, while information having reached him that the rebels in arms at St. Charles had been greatly increased in numbers, and had with them a number of lawless American or Yankee "sympathisers," under his late guest, Colonel Smash, whom he remembered at the mess, eating peas with his knife and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; so he made a halt at St. Hilaire, until he could be joined by a fifth company of the 1st Royal Scots under Hector Logan. On that night it was evident that the country was alarmed. Instead of the stillness usual to the time, the clanging of church bells was heard at intervals, with the barking of dogs, the report of firearms occasionally, the blowing of conches and horns, red alarm-fires blazed up on the dark summits of the distant hills; and more than once horsemen in hot haste dashed past the advanced sentinels without responding to their challenge, and as the troops, as yet, were only acting in support of the civil power, they could not fire upon these strangers. This was the night of the 24th November, and to Roland, like many others, it was a sleepless one, as he commanded an out-picket and had to visit his sentinels every hour. On one side of his post rolled the mighty river, reflecting in its ripples the star-spangled sky; on the other, stretched away into darkness and utter obscurity the vast dingles of an American forest, planted and grown by nature. His mind was full of that last evening with Aurelia and all its sweet details. On his odious rival he scarcely bestowed a thought, and he felt happier than an emperor in his palace, as he lay there, with his cloak around him, his sword and pistols at hand, his head pillowed on a pine-log, and all oblivious of the rattlesnakes, which there are six feet long. Near him was Robert Bruce, one of his sentinels, treading softly to and fro, with bayonet fixed, and singing to himself the old Scottish barrackroom ditty:-- "Poor Willie was landed at bonnie Dumbarton, Where the stream from Loch Lomond runs into the sea, While at home in sweet Ireland, he left Mary Martin, With a babe at her breast and a child at her knee."