it up with their swords and bayonets, in the search. Mrs. Secord who had
a store of Spanish doubloons, heirlooms, saved them by throwing them
into a cauldron of water which hung on a crane over a blazing fire. In
this she unconsciously emulated the ready wit of one of her husband's
Huguenot progenitors, a lady, who during the persecution that followed
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, at a period of domiciliary search
for incriminating proofs of unorthodoxy, is said to have thrown a copy
of the Bible--a doubly precious treasure in those days--into a churn of
milk from whence it was afterwards rescued little the worse, thanks to
heavy binding and strong clasps.

Envy having sent a shaft at even so warm and patriotic a breast as that
of Mrs. Secord, Col. Fitzgibbon sent her a certificate, dated only a
short time before his death, vouching to the facts of the heroic deed.
It was evidently one of the cruel necessities of this hard life. The
certificate runs as follows:


FITZGIBBON'S CERTIFICATE.

"I do hereby certify that Mrs. Secord, the wife of James Secord, of
Chippewa, Esq., did, in the month of June, 1813, walk from her house in
the village of St. David's to Decamp's house in Thorold, by a circuitous
route of about twenty miles, partly through the woods, to acquaint me
that the enemy intended to attempt by surprise to capture a detachment
of the 49th Regiment, then under my command; she having obtained such
knowledge from good authority, as the event proved. Mrs. Secord was a
person of slight and delicate frame; and made the effort in weather
excessively warm, and I dreaded at the time that she must suffer in
health in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, she having been exposed to