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.