It was not so much the look of Montreal that made us hate the place, as it was the feel of it, and the gloom of the Americans we met wherever we turned. The city was a rich one, with fine residences and a wealth of warehouses; but its people had sour faces that grew sourer at sight of us. Some spat as they passed. Others were contemptuous, and their mutterings venomous, so that Cap Huff bubbled profanity beneath his breath, as if there were a fire under him, and he a kettle filled with simmering soup.

On every street were American soldiers, recognizable as such because they had bayonets in scabbards, or dented kettles banging against their hips, or the tattered remnants of blankets over their shoulders—though I’d have taken them for beggars if Nason hadn’t stopped a few for questioning.

They were the raggedest men I had ever seen anywhere, and I have seen plenty of ragged ones, especially in Spanish ports, where the beggars wear clothes that must have been old when Columbus was a boy.

Most of them were shoeless and stockingless, and their breeches little more than dirty rags and ribbons. Their coats were good for nothing except to conceal the gaping holes in their shirts, or, in the case of those without shirts, to hide part of their nakedness. They were emaciated, too, with sores on their faces and legs; and their dull eyes were dejected. They started at small sounds, staring furtively over their shoulders, so that a person who looked at them too long became depressed himself.

They were hunting food, they always told Nason; and when he asked where their companies were, they said their enlistments had expired and they were trying to get home—though most of them, I think, were lying. When we went on, they slunk away, peering into alleys and up at windows like hungry cats.

When at last we reached the Château Ramezay, a low, solid, steep-roofed building behind a tall iron fence and iron gates, we found more of these scarecrow soldiers. They sprawled in the open field across from headquarters like heaps of rags, as dead men lie after a battle, or sat on the curbstone, staring at nothing with lack-lustre eyes. Some held up kettles to passersby, hoping for food.

At the gates of the Château were two real soldiers, sentries in blue uniforms faced with red; and on either side of the double doors were two more. They looked out of place, somehow, like bright patches on an ancient mainsail.

“Stack your arms,” Nason told us, “and keep tight hold of what flour you’ve got left. Cap and I, we’ll go in and report. You’re not to move till we come out.” To me he said, “You’d better come in with us. If the general’s there, I guess he’ll want to hear what you’ve got to say.”