75, when
Montgomery and his officers held their mess here, and the descendants of
the Puritans changed the character of the French chateau, as Oliver
Cromwell and his "Roundheads," a century before, altered that of the
English palace of Whitehall.

[Illustration: CHATEAU FORTIER.

Where Montgomery and his officers held their mess in the winter of 1775.

COPYRIGHT.]

Little or nothing is known of what happened in Montreal during the
autumn of 1775, when the Army of Congress held possession of the town.
There may, and doubtless were, some sympathizers in the city who
frequented the Chateau Fortier, but the loyalists avoided its vicinity
as much as policy permitted. The French and English ladies looked
askance at the American soldiers, and if a town, invested by an enemy,
indulged in any form of merriment, it is probable that no invitation was
ever addressed to General Montgomery or Brigadier-General Wooster. In
their rounds of the town it may have been that glimpses of home
gatherings in the firelight may have given to these men of war many a
twinge of homesickness for hearths across the border, where women who
had been clad in satin and brocade sat spinning homespun, and were
content to drink spring water from the hills, while the tea they had
loved to sip in their Colonial drawing-rooms was floating about the
Boston beaches. If the Boys in blue and buff encountered any of the
Montreal maidens in their walks by the river, or glanced at them as they
passed through the gates to wander in the maple woods around, the
English girls passed them haughtily with a cold disdain in their blue
eyes, and the French demoiselles flashed a fine scorn from the depths of
their dark orbs, which wounded as keenly as a thrust of steel.

Events followed each other so rapidly across the line that Montgomery,
tired of inaction, resolved to carry out before the year ended his
cherished plan of making an assault on Quebec, and proceeded to join
Arnold's men, who, half-famished and in rags, had arrived outside that
city's walls.

Arnold, who was born at Norwich, Connecticut, Jan. 14, 1741, was, it is
said, a very handsome man, but his character was a striking combination
of contradictory qualities, and his career marked by extremes. He was
the bearer of a letter from General Washington to the Canadians, in
which was written: "We have taken up arms in defence of our liberty, our
property, our wives and our children. The Grand American Congre