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“You rude boor,” retorted Gen. Hampton hotly, “we have come to give liberty to Canada, and our armies will be welcomed by its down-trodden people as their deliverers. I have reports and letters to that effect from Montreal and, best of all, the personal report of one of my staff, now dead, sent on a special mission.”

“Don’t trust ’em, General. We who came from the States know what you mean by liberty—freedom to swallow Whigery and persecution if you refuse. The Old Countrymen are stiff as hickory against you, and the French—why, at heart, they are against both.”

“It is false, sir. I have filled up my regiments since I came to this frontier with French.”

“It wa’nt for love of you; it was for your $40 bounty.”

The General rose and throwing open the shutter, closed to exclude the sunshine, revealed the army in review; masses of infantry moving with passable precision, a long train of artillery, and a dashing corps of cavalry. Proudly turning to the farmer he said,

“What can stop the sweep of such an army? England may well halt in her guilty career at the sight of these embattled sons of liberty and loosen her bloody clutch upon this continent of the New World.”