city, learned to his amazement that his jesting words were
true. The salvoes of artillery and peals of bells were indeed in honour
of General Brock's victory in far-off Michigan.

Neither King nor Imperial Government was slow to recognize our hero's
achievements. The Prince Regent, who expressed his appreciation of
Brock's "able, judicious and decisive conduct," bestowed upon him an
_extra_ knighthood of the Order of the Bath, in consideration, so ran
the document, "of all the difficulties with which he was surrounded
during the invasion of the Province, and the singular judgment,
firmness, skill and courage with which he surmounted them so
effectually."

When the glittering insignia of his new rank reached Canada, Sir Isaac
Brock's eyes were closed in death. His inanimate body, from which one of
the noblest souls of the century had fled, lay rigid in its
winding-sheet at Fort George.

To Major Glegg, who bore the General's despatches from Canada, the
Prince Regent remarked that "General Brock had done more in an hour than
could have been done in six months by negotiation." The fulfilment of
Isaac's favourite maxim, "Say and do," was being demonstrated in a most
remarkable manner.

[Illustration: "PORTRAIT OF MAJOR-GENERAL BROCK, 18 X 6"]

CHAPTER XXIII.

"HERO, DEFENDER, SAVIOUR."

General Sheaffe, the only field officer available, and junior colonel of
the 49th, of whom the reader has already heard, had been brought from
the East to take command at Niagara in Brock's absence. Like Prevost, he
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1763, a son of the deputy
collector of that port. There the two had been school-fellows, and both
found it difficult to engage in vigorous diplomatic or military conflict
with the Americans. To Sheaffe's credit, it should be said that he
applied for another station.

It was Sheaffe, however, who acceded to General Dearborn's specious
demand that the _freedom of the lakes and rivers_ be extended to the
United States Government during the armistice. This was done while Brock
was in the West. Sheaffe it also was who, with hat in hand and strange
alacrity, later agreed, despite his first terrible blunder, to repeat
the offence. On the very afternoon that the British defeated the
Americans at Queenston, and when the moral effect of that victory,
followed up by vigorous attack, would have saved Canada from a
continuance of the war, and deplorable loss of life and trade, Sheaffe
a