Then came a day of change. The summer woods
Were white with English tents, and sap and trench
Crept like a serpent to the battered walls.
Prideaux lay dead 'mid carnage, smoke, and fire
Before the Gallic drums beat parley—then
Niagara fell, and all the East and West
Did follow: and our Canada was won.
As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the flag slid down the halyards, and the sullen roar of the sunset gun boomed over the wave, and was echoed back by the dense forest wall around and by the still low-hanging clouds overhead. A moment later the British gun of Fort George, on the opposite side of the river, but concealed from the spectator by a curve in the shore, loudly responded, as if in haughty defiance to the challenge of a foe.
Turning his horse's head, the young man rode rapidly down the road, beneath a row of noble chestnuts, and drew rein opposite a substantial-looking, brick farmhouse, but with such small windows as almost to look like a casematad fortress. Dismounting, he threw his horse's bridle over the hitching-post at the gate, and passed through a neat garden, now blooming with roses and sweet peas, to the open door of the house. He knocked with his riding-whip on the door jamb, to which summons a young lady, dressed in a neat calico gown and swinging in her hand a broad-leafed sunhat, replied. Seeing a stranger, she dropped a graceful "courtesy,"—which is one of the lost arts now-a-days,—and put up her hand to brush back from her face her wealth of clustering curls, somewhat dishevelled by the exercise of raking in the hayfield.
"Is this the house of Squire Drayton?" asked Neville, politely raising his hat.
The young lady, for such she evidently was, though so humbly dressed—simplex munditiis—replied that it was, and invited the stranger into the large and comfortable sitting-room, which bore evidence of refinement, although the carpet was of woven rags and much of the furniture was home-made.
"I have a letter to him from Elder Ryan," said Neville, presenting a document elaborately folded, after the manner of epistolary missives of the period.
"Oh, you're the new presiding elder, are you?" asked the lady. "We heard you were coming."
"No, not the presiding elder," said Neville, smiling at the unwonted dignity attributed to him, "and not even an elder at all; but simply a Methodist preacher on trial—a junior, who may be an elder some day."
"Excuse me," said the young lady, blushing at her mistake. "Father has just gone to the village for his paper, but will be back shortly. Zenas, take the preacher's horse," she continued to a stout lad who had just come in from the hayfield.
"I will help him," said Neville, proceeding with the boy. It was the almost invariable custom of the pioneer preachers to see that their faithful steeds were groomed and fed, before they attended to their own wants.