lls' eggs. His vigour and disregard of danger were magnificent. His
example, splendid.

Brock may not have been judicially precautious. Had he waited for
reinforcements--there were none nearer than Fort George--his own life
might possibly have been preserved. As an alternative he could perhaps
have withdrawn and sought shelter in the village. But--apart from the
peril to his own prestige--who would care to estimate the ulterior
effect upon his men if such an example had been set them? These rough
Canadian irregulars consisted, as they do to-day, of the finest fighting
material in the world. The law of self-preservation had no place in the
litany of Isaac Brock. He was a daily dealer in self-sacrifice. Besides,
this was not the time or place to calculate involved issues. He was not
a cold-blooded politician, nor was he an opportunist; he was merely a
patriot and a soldier fighting for hearth and home, for flag and
country. It was not an issue that could be left to arbitration in the
hereafter, or threshed out by judge and jury. The situation called for
instant action. To _do_ his obvious duty rather than to _know_ it,
seemed to our hero the only honorable exit from the dilemma, even though
it resulted in his own undoing.

Not until the dead are mustered by the God of hosts--at the last
roll-call--will this noble soldier's conception of duty and his
sacrifice be truly appraised.

God and the right was carved deep in the heart of Isaac Brock. Though he
felt for his men, it was in a compassionate, not a weak way. War without
bloodshed was inconceivable. He had been trained in an age and in a
school that regarded blood-shedding in the protection of the right as
wholly justifiable, as it was inevitable. Is there any change in respect
to the application of this doctrine to-day? For himself he had no
compassion whatever. His faith in the cause compelled him to fight to a
finish. He was not of the potter's common clay of which fatalists are
made. How many of these faithful fellows, he wondered, as his alert mind
rapidly reviewed the present and recalled the past--Canadian and Celt,
Irish and Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and Catholic, whom "neither politics,
sect or creed could, in such a crisis, keep apart"--would leave their
bodies to bleach on that hill-side? How many of them were destined to
yield their lives for honour's sake, to die with their valour unrecorded
in the defence--in the case of numbers of them--not of their own,