Each remaining settler was on the 25th of June served with a notice signed by four Nor’-Westers, thus: 

“All settlers to retire immediately from Red River, and no trace of a settlement to remain.” (Signed) Cuthbert Grant, etc.

Two days after the notice was served the beleaguered settlers, made up of some thirteen families—­in all from forty to sixty persons, who had remained true to Lord Selkirk and the Colony—­went forth from their homes as sadly as the Acadian refugees from Grand Pre.  They were allowed to take with them such belongings as they had, and in boats and other craft went pensively down Red River with Lake Winnipeg and Jack River in view as their destination.  The house of the Governor, the mill, and the buildings which the settlers had begun to build upon their lots were all set on fire and destroyed.

The U.E.  Loyalists of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia draw upon our sympathies in their sufferings of hunger and hardship, but they afford no parallel to the discouragement, dangers, and dismay of the Selkirk Colonists.

Alexander Macdonell’s party of seventy or eighty mounted men easily carried out this work of destruction.  There was one fly in the ointment for them.  The small Hudson’s Bay House built by Fidler still remained.  Here a daring Celt, John McLeod, was in charge.  Seeing the temper of Macdonell’s levy McLeod determined to fortify his rude castle.  Beside the trading house of the Hudson’s Bay Company stood the blacksmith’s shop.  Hurriedly McLeod, with a cart, carried thither the three-pounder cannon in his possession, then cut up lengths of chain to be his shot and shell, used with care his small supply of powder and with three or four men, his only garrison, stood to his gun and awaited the attack of the Bois-Brules.  Being on horseback his assailants could not long face his one piece of artillery.  It is not known to what extent the assailants suffered in the skirmish, but John Warren, a gentleman of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was killed in the encounter.  The siege of McLeod’s improvised fort continued for several days, but the defence was successful, and McLeod saved for the Company L1,000 worth of goods.

CHAPTER VIII.

No surrender.

The crisis has come.  The Colony seems to be blotted out.  The affair may appear small, being nothing more than the defence of the smithy, with one gun and the most primitive contrivances, yet as Mercutio says of his wound:  “’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but it is enough.”

The plucky McLeod, with three men held his fort and though the dusky Bois-brules on their prairie ponies for a time hovered about yet they did not dare to approach the spiteful little field piece.  The Metis soon betook themselves westward to their own district of Qu’Appelle.

The danger being over for the present, John McLeod began to restore the Colony buildings and even to aim at greater things than had been before.