On the 2d of July a British force of 500, commanded by Frazier, attacked and drove in the American pickets, and, the right wing moving up, took possession of Mount Hope. St. Clair expected an assault, and ordered his men to conceal themselves behind the breastworks, and reserve their fire. Frazier's force, not perceiving the position of the Americans, screened as it was by bushes, continued to advance till an American soldier fired his musket, when the whole line delivered a random volley, followed by a thunderous discharge of artillery, all without orders, and without effect but to kill one of the assailants, and raise a cloud of smoke that hung in the hot, breathless air till the assailants had escaped behind it out of range. The possibilities of Mount Defiance had not escaped the eyes of the British engineers, and they were at once accepted. General Phillips set himself to the task of making a road up the rocky declivities, over which heavy siege guns were already being hauled. When, on the morning of the 5th of July, the sun's first rays shot far above the shadowed valley, they lighted to a ruddier glow the scarlet uniforms of a swarm of British soldiers on the bald summit, busy in the construction of a battery. St. Clair called a council of his officers, and it was decided that it was impossible to hold the place, and the only safety of the army was in immediate evacuation. This was undertaken that night. The baggage, stores, and all the artillery that could be got away, embarked on 200 batteaux, set forth for Skenesborough under the convoy of five galleys. The main army was to march to Castleton, and thence to Skenesborough. At two o'clock on the morning of the 6th of July, St. Clair moved out of Ticonderoga. Sorrowfully the Green Mountain Boys relinquished, with almost as little bloodshed as two years before they had gained it, the fortress that guarded the frontier of their country. The troops fled across the bridge in silence to the eastern shore, and an hour later the garrison of Mount Independence began moving out. So far, the doleful work of evacuation had progressed with such secrecy that the British were unaware of any movement. Just then a French officer of the garrison, zealous to destroy what he could not save, set fire to his house. The sun-dried wooden structure was ablaze in an instant, lighting up with a lurid glare all the works of the place, the hurrying troops, the forest border with ghastly ranks of towering tree-trunks, the bridge still undulating with the tread of just-departed marching columns, and the slow throb of waves pulsing across the empty anchorage and breaking against deserted shores.