at all! Carleton sends back secret express.
He can send no help. He has no more men. Montgomery tactfully lets
the message pass in. After siege of forty-five days, Preston
surrenders with all the honors of war, his six hundred and eighty-eight
men marching {301} out, arms reversed, and going aboard Montgomery's
ships to proceed as prisoners up Lake Champlain.

The way is now open to Montreal. Benedict Arnold, meanwhile, with the
army directed against Quebec, has crossed from the Kennebec to the
Chaudiere, paddled across St. Lawrence River, and on the very day that
Montgomery's troops take possession of Montreal, November 13, Arnold's
army has camped on the Plains of Abraham behind Quebec walls, whence he
scatters his foragers, ravaging the countryside far west as Three
Rivers for provisions. The trials of his canoe voyage from Maine to
the St. Lawrence at swift pace have been terrific. More than half his
men have fallen away either from illness or open desertion. Arnold has
fewer than seven hundred men as he waits for Montgomery at Quebec.

[Illustration: GENERAL RICHARD MONTGOMERY]

What of Guy Carleton, the English governor, now? Canada's case seemed
hopeless. The flower of her army had been taken prisoners, and no help
could come before May. Desperate circumstances either make or break a
man, prove or undo him. As reverses closed in on Carleton, like the
wrestlers of old he but took tighter grip of his resolutions.

On November 11, two days before Preston's men surrendered, Carleton,
with two or three military officers disguised as peasants, boarded one
of three armed vessels to go down from Montreal to Quebec. All the
cannon at Montreal had been dismounted and spiked. What powder could
not be carried {302} away was buried or thrown into the river. Amid
funereal silence, shaking hands sadly with the Montreal friends who had
gathered at the wharf to say farewell, the English Governor left
Montreal. That night the wind failed, and the three vessels lay to
with limp sails. At Sorel, at Three Rivers, at every hamlet on both
sides of the St. Lawrence, lay American scouts to capture the English
Governor. All next day the vessels lay wind-bound. Desperate for the
fate of Quebec, Carleton embarked on a river barge propelled by sweeps.
Passing Sorel at night Carleton and his disguised officers could see
the camp fires of the American army. Here oars were laid aside and the
raft steadied down the tide