pursuit than of defence that they were completely taken by surprise when ‘704 firelocks’ under Colonel Harvey suddenly attacked them just after midnight.  Harvey, chief staff officer to Vincent, was a first-rate leader for such daring work as this, and his men were all well disciplined.  But the whole enterprise might have failed, for all that.  Some of the men opened fire too soon, and the nearest Americans began to stand to their arms.  But, while Harvey ran along re-forming the line, Major Plenderleath, with some of Brock’s old regiment, the 49th, charged straight into the American centre, took the guns there, and caused so much confusion that Harvey’s following charge carried all before it.  Next morning, June 6, the Americans began a retreat which was hastened by Yeo’s arrival on their lakeward flank, by the Indians on the Heights, and by Vincent’s reinforcements in their rear.  Not till they reached the shelter of Fort George did they attempt to make a stand.

The two armies now faced each other astride of the lake-shore road and the Heights.  The British left advanced post, between Ten and Twelve Mile Creeks, was under Major de Haren of the 104th, a regiment which, in the preceding winter, had marched on snow-shoes through the woods all the way from the middle of New Brunswick to Quebec.  The corresponding British post inland, near the Beaver Dams, was under Lieutenant FitzGibbon of the 49th, a cool, quick-witted, and adventurous Irishman, who had risen from the ranks by his own good qualities and Brock’s recommendation.  Between him and the Americans at Queenston and St David’s was a picked force of Indian scouts with a son of the great chief Joseph Brant.  These Indians never gave the Americans a minute’s rest.  They were up at all hours, pressing round the flanks, sniping the sentries, worrying the outposts, and keeping four times their own numbers on the perpetual alert.  What exasperated the Americans even more was the wonderfully elusive way in which the Indians would strike their blow and then be lost to sight and sound the very next moment, if, indeed, they ever were seen at all.  Finally, this endless skirmish with an invisible foe became so harassing that the Americans sent out a flying column of six hundred picked men under Colonel Boerstler on June 24 to break up FitzGibbon’s post at the Beaver Dams and drive the Indians out of the intervening bush altogether.

But the American commanders had not succeeded in hiding their preparations from the vigilant eyes of the Indian scouts or from the equally attentive ears of Laura Secord, the wife of an ardent U. E. Loyalist, James Secord, who was still disabled by the wounds he had received when fighting under Brock’s command at Queenston Heights.  Early in the morning of the 23rd, while Laura Secord was going out to milk the cows, she overheard some Americans talking about the surprise in store for FitzGibbon next day.  Without giving the slightest sign she quietly drove