about 1,000 prisoners, including Major-General Wadsworth and many officers.

The number killed in this, the first great battle of "the War of 1812," will never be known.

One man was heard to cry significantly to a group of his fellows, "Come, men; it is better to be drowned than hanged," for there were many British renegades serving in the American army and navy during the years of this war.

Although the Americans were severely defeated in their determined invasion, it is probable that Canada lost more by the death of General Brock than she gained by the victory at Queenston Heights, for he was a man trained to war in the ablest school, and a leader who knew every mile of the frontier he was called upon to defend, and who was loved by his soldiers.

XIII

The Story of Laura Secord

L

By ANGUS EVAN ABBOTT

AURA SECORD'S name is revered by the Canadians in much the same way as is that of Grace Darling in England, or, still better illustration, for each was concerned in war, Jeanne d'Arc in the land of "dame and dance. Of her deed the verse-writers of Canada, and they are many, have, one may say without exception, spun their rhymes; and no history of the wonderful northland would be acceptable to the Canadians did it fail to mention her name and chronicle her heroism. Tales have been told, dramas woven, songs sung to her honor; and as time goes on, her memory is surely destined to be kept green by the warm-hearted people of the great Dominion. For with heroic determination she pressed stoutly on through dark woods and across swollen streams to save the little army of Canadians from surprise and annihilation.

Mrs. Laura Secord was a daughter of Thomas Ingersoll, a United Empire Loyalist who removed from the United States to Canada after

the war for independence and founded Ingersoll, now a flourishing town of some five thousand inhabitants. Laura married Mr. James Secord, and at the outbreak of the War of 1812 the two were living in Queenston on the banks of the Niagara River. When news came to the Canadians that an army for invasion was being formed on the opposite bank, James Secord, like most Canadians able to bear arms, volunteered for the defence of his country. He ranked as captain when the first decisive battle, Queenston Heights, was fought. That he bore himself gallantly and fought with all his might there can be no disputing, for towards the end of the awful day his wife Laura, as she picked her way among the wounded and dead - while the war-whoops of the frenzied red men still rang from the cliffs where the invaders were clinging to the face of the rock, with above the savages and below the swirling river-she came upon her husband lying among the dead as one dead. The wife gathered the wounded volunteer into her arms, and made her way with as great speed as the burden would allow to their house. There she found that, although he had received two desperate wounds, he still breathed. All that winter she nursed and tended him, and when in June the secret of the invading army came into her possession, her husband was still a cripple, and she her

self determined to risk all and make the long journey alone.

As a reward for the valiant part he had played at the battle of Queenston Heights, James Secord had been granted by the Canadian Government a small tract of land, which lay some distance outside of the village of Queenston. On the farm he and his wife lived, himself crippled and sorely distressed; and to their house, on the evening of the 22d of June, 1813, came two American officers, who demanded food. While awaiting for or partaking of this, they fell to discussing the situation and Dearborn's plans, and, most imprudently as it turned out, carried on their conversation in a tone of voice loud enough for Mrs. Secord, who was waiting on them at table, to overhear everything they said.

Soldier's wife that she was, and patriotic Canadian as well, she quickly guessed that some decisive move against her country's troops was meditated, and she paid careful but cautious attention to everything that passed between her two unbidden guests. When they had finished their meal and departed, Laura Secord repeated to her husband all that she had heard, and he agreed with her that an attempt to surprise the Canadians would certainly be made. If the surprise succeeded, the whole of western Canada must fall. That night the husband and wife dis

cussed the pros and cons of the situation, and, the husband being unable to leave the house, the wife decided to make an attempt to steal through the American lines, and thread, by a circuitous route, twenty miles of bush to warn FitzGibbon of his great danger.

Laura Secord arose at dawn. She had planned every step of her journey and arranged the strategy by which she hoped to pass the vigilant pickets, whom the American general had thrown out at the skirt of the woods to prevent the accomplishment of just such enterprises as she had undertaken. Dressing herself only in a jacket and short flannel skirt, and without shoes or stockings, she took her milking-pail in one hand, her three-legged milking-stool in the other, and set out to where her cow was lying, not yet having arisen from her night's sleep. As soon as she quitted the house, she beheld the pickets at their stations all alert with the vigilance of a coming crisis. She had not gone a rod from her house before the soldiers detected her, and, although they would know that, on a farm, woman's first duty is to milk the cow (it takes precedence over everything, the object being to allow the beast to eat her fill before the scorching heat of day and the swarms of flies drive her to take shelter under a tree), they still kept strict watch over her actions.