It will ill become me to despise the favourite residence of a person for whom I have at all times testified the greatest love esteem and respect.  Indeed I think my behaviour hitherto might have spared me such a severe remark....  You charge me with being inconsistent and changeable, in which opinion you are not, I believe, singular; but until you point out to me where I have been so, I shall till then, plead not guilty in my own mind.

War was now brooding over Canada—­the fratricidal War of 1812.  But for the time Quebec was gay.  There was hardly a week without a private ball, Tom wrote in February, 1812; and the assemblies, dinners and suppers were innumerable.  He chaffs his sister Christine, whose rheumatic pains had apparently become a kind of family joke, and says that, since they are the enemies of high kicking, her inability longer for this pastime “is partly the cause of her sounding a retreat to the peaceful shades and grottoes of Murray Bay.”  Polly, the other unmarried sister, was more content to be at Murray Bay, with results that led to a family tragedy as we shall see later.  Her brother pictures her driving his nag with her carriole through the country; so reckless is she that she is sure to run down some one.  “Does she, proud and high, still continue hopping away to the country weddings?” His request that Pope’s Works and The Spectator be sent to him seems to indicate a serious turn of mind.  He is sending to Murray Bay The Lady of the Lake and The Lay of the Last Minstrel whose middle-aged author was just turning from poetry to win unprecedented success as a writer of fiction.  In the spring he goes out shooting for snipe nearly every day; and he sends to Murray Bay for his fishing tackle.  When a fellow officer falls ill he sends him down to Murray Bay for a month.

Soon came a more active life.  War with the United States was near and Canada was getting ready.  In May, 1812, Malcolm Fraser, led to Quebec from Murray Bay and the intervening parishes what militia he could muster.  At the same time, he was made a commissioner to administer the oaths of allegiance:  in extreme old age the veteran was ready again to do what he could.  The Newfoundland regiment, to which Tom belonged, was ordered to the interior.  The storm cloud drew near and burst on June 19th, 1812, in the form of a declaration of war by the United States on Great Britain.  The Americans intended to pour troops into Upper Canada, but sparsely settled at that time, and quickly to occupy it.  The frontier on the Niagara River was the chief danger point and the Newfoundland Regiment was sent up to Lake Ontario to aid in the defence.  On July 3rd, 1812, Tom writes from Kingston in Upper Canada.  The news has reached him that war has been declared; and already, busy with the task of placing men and supplies where they will be most needed, he has been the length of Lake Ontario in the Royal George; staying two