moment's notice.

A north-easterly snowstorm was blowing furiously, straight
up the St Lawrence, making Quebec a partly seen blur to
the nearest American patrols and the Heights of Abraham
a wild sea of whirling drifts to the nearest British
sentries. One o'clock passed, and nothing stirred. But
when two o'clock struck at Holland House Montgomery rose
and began to put the council's plan in operation. The
Lower Town was to be attacked at both ends. The
Pres-de-Ville barricade was to be carried by Montgomery
and the Sault-au-Matelot by Arnold, while Livingston was
to distract Carleton's attention as much as possible by
making a feint against the landward walls, where the
British still expected the real attack. Livingston's
Canadian fighting 'patriots' waded through the drifts,
against the storm, across the Plains, and took post close
in on the far side of Cape Diamond, only eighty yards
from the same walls that were to have been stormed some
days before. Jerry Duggan's parasitic Canadian 'patriots'
took post in the suburb of St John and thence round to
Palace Gate. Montgomery led his own column straight to
Wolfe's Cove, whence he marched in along the narrow path
between the cliff and the St Lawrence till he reached
the spot at the foot of Cape Diamond just under the right
of Livingston's line. Arnold, whose quarters were in the
valley of the St Charles, took post in St Roch, with a
mortar battery to fire against the walls and a column of
men to storm the Sault-au-Matelot. Livingston's and Jerry
Duggan's whole command numbered about four hundred men,
Montgomery's five hundred, Arnold's six. The opposing
totals were fifteen hundred Americans against seventeen
hundred British. There was considerable risk of confusion
between friend and foe, as most of the Americans, especially
Arnold's men, wore captured British uniforms with nothing
to distinguish them but odds and ends of their former
kits and a sort of paper hatband bearing the inscription
_Liberty or Death_.

A little after four the sentries on the walls at Cape
Diamond saw lights flashing about in front of them and
were just going to call the guard when Captain Malcolm
Fraser of the Royal Emigrants came by on his rounds and
saw other lights being set out in regular order like
lamps in a street. He instantly turned out the guards
and pickets. The drums beat to arms. Every church bell
in the city pealed forth its alarm into that wild night.
The bugles blew. The