news of which, the young man, in his last letter preserved to us, wrote, “nearly bereft me of my senses.”  In those anxious days of domestic difficulty and of war the old mother and her two remaining daughters at the Manor House had assuredly enough to think of.  Then came Fate’s sharpest blow.  The tradition is still preserved at Murray Bay that on November 11th, 1813, Mrs. Nairne, the Captain’s mother, was in the kitchen at Murray Bay, when suddenly a sound like the report of a gun came up as it were from the cellar.  She put her hands to her head, cried “Tom is killed,” and sank fainting into a chair.  The day and the hour were, it is said, noted by those about her.

By this time Thomas Nairne’s regiment had passed from Burlington Heights to Kingston, at the opposite end of Lake Ontario, some two hundred miles away.  The St. Lawrence River had now become the chief danger point for Canada.  On October 21st the American General Wilkinson, with 8,000 men, left Sackett’s Harbour near the east end of Lake Ontario, opposite Kingston, in boats, to descend the St. Lawrence and attack Montreal—­the identical plan that the British had found so successful in 1760.  In addition, as fifty years earlier, another American force was to advance through the country bordering on Lake Champlain so that the two armies might unite before Montreal.  From the first the American plans went ill.  The more easterly force met with ignominious defeat by a handful of French Canadians at Chateauguay.  Wilkinson did little better.  British troops, among them Nairne’s regiment, were hurried down the river under Colonel Morrison to harass, if possible, Wilkinson’s rear and to fire upon his 300 boats from the points of vantage on the shore.  After a slow descent, day after day, on the night of November 10th the rear of the American force, under General Boyd, landed and encamped near Crysler’s farm, a short distance above the beginning of the Long Sault Rapids on the St. Lawrence, to descend which needed caution.  As the American rear was some distance from the vanguard, the British, though much inferior in numbers, thought the time favourable for attack.  On the morning of the 11th when General Boyd was about to begin his day’s march forward, the British, some 800 against a force of 1800, advanced in line.  Their right was on the river and the line extended to a wood about 700 yards to the left.  The American general did not refuse the gage of battle and a sharp fight followed.  Boyd tried to outflank the British left and Nairne’s company was sent forward to charge for one of the enemy’s guns.  When well in advance it was checked by a deep ravine lying between the two armies and the American cavalry made a movement to cut off the advancing party.  The pause was fatal to Thomas Nairne.  A musket ball entered his head just above the left ear; he died instantly and without pain.  The British won the day.  After a fierce fight the enemy fled to their boats, embarked in great disorder and fled down the river.  Their generals, when they could hold a council, decided that the attack on Montreal must be abandoned.