have little
chance of reducing it quickly, if at all, with the means
at hand, especially as the Americans had supplies close
by at Lake George, while he was now a hundred miles south
of his base. A winter siege was impossible. Sufficient
supplies could never be brought through the dense,
snow-encumbered bush, all the way from Canada, even if
the long and harassing line of communications had not
been everywhere open to American attack. Moreover,
Carleton's army was in no way prepared for a midwinter
campaign, even if it could have been supplied with food
and warlike stores. So he very sensibly turned his back
on Lake Champlain until the following year.

That was the gayest winter Quebec had seen since Montcalm's
first season, twenty years before. Carleton had been
knighted for his services and was naturally supposed to
be the chosen leader for the next campaign. The ten
thousand troops gave confidence to the loyalists and
promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were
getting their disillusioned parishioners back to the fold
beneath the Union Jack; while _Jean Ba'tis'e_ himself
was fain to admit that his own ways of life and the money
he got for his goods were very much safer with _les
Angla's_ than with the revolutionists, whom he called
_les Bastonna's_ because most trade between Quebec and
the Thirteen Colonies was carried on by vessels hailing
from the port of Boston. The seigneurs were delighted.
They still hoped for commissions as regulars, which too
few of them ever received; and they were charmed with
the little viceregal court over which Lady Maria Carleton,
despite her youthful two-and-twenty summers, presided
with a dignity inherited from the premier ducal family
of England and brought to the acme of conventional
perfection by her intimate experience of Versailles. On
New Year's Eve Carleton gave a public fete, a state
dinner, and a ball to celebrate the anniversary of the
British victory over Montgomery and Arnold. The bishop
held a special thanksgiving and made all notorious
renegades do open penance. Nothing seemed wanting to
bring the New Year in under the happiest auspices since
British rule began.

But, quite unknown to Carleton, mischief was brewing in
the Colonial Office of that unhappy government which did
so many stupid things and got the credit for so many
more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was
superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the
mismanagement of