Standing by the belt of wood occupied by his own men, he heard the word pass that the day was lost. He ran across a ploughed field, encountering by the way a friend who inquired how things were going, and Mackenzie’s blanched face gave a direct denial to his hurried “all right.” At the side-line where young Macdougall happened to be when on his way to the seat of war, his footsteps hastened by the sound of cannonading, a horse stood saddled and bridled, evidently left there as a precaution for someone. Women and children, terrified enough at what they saw, more so at what they feared, were hurrying northward, filling the air with their cries. While Macdougall was trying to explain away their fears he saw a little man rush down a lane, mount and ride swiftly away. There was blood on the man’s hand, doubtless his own from a wound he had given himself on the Friday night, when trying to extract one of Sheriff Jarvis’ pistol bullets from the toe of a comrade. He had been so nervous that his shaking hand made him gash himself, and the cutting out had to be done by Judah Lundy. Probably the wound in the hand had reopened when he was scrambling over the intervening fences and bushes.
“Oh, God of my country! they turn now to fly-- Hark, the eagle of Liberty screams in the sky,”
says Mackenzie’s muse in one place, and before this,
“Yes, onward they come, like the mountain’s wild flood, And the lion’s dark talons are dappled in blood.”
Again he says, “I am proud of my descent from a rebel race, who held borrowed chieftains, a scrip nobility, rag money and national debt in abomination.”
He himself was now the one flying, and the lion’s talons left off dappling in blood to try to get him within their clutches, while he showed the truth of the third quotation by returning to first principles and displaying another Highland indication--petticoats. Earlier in the day a lady on her way through Toronto to Cornwall had been in the stage when he stopped it to intercept the news of Duncombe’s rising, and to seize the general contents of the mail-bags. With a pistol at her head he had possessed himself of her portmanteau, and in the contents was enabled later to disguise himself. He was described in Sir Francis’ reward for his apprehension as a “short man, wears a sandy-coloured wig, has small twinkling eyes that can look no man in the face....” At the Golden Lion, about ten miles above the city, he overtook Colonel Anthony Van Egmond, and they agreed to make at once for the Niagara frontier. But the colonel was taken and only Mackenzie escaped. In those mail bags he had been made a sorry dupe by Mr. Isaac Buchanan, who anticipated that they would be so robbed. The mail contained two decoy letters from him, representing matters in the beleaguered city in a most flourishing condition, letters which were read by Mackenzie and no doubt helped to bring about the desired result.