It is one of the dread results of international conflict that the inhabitants of the hostile frontiers, who may have previously dwelt in good fellowship and neighbourly helpfulness, are often changed to deadly enemies, and even claim for their bitter hostility the sanctions of duty. There was one conspicuous exception on the banks of the Niagara. Mary Lawson, the daughter of the village miller and merchant of the little hamlet of Youngstown, that nestled under the wing of Fort Niagara on the American side of the river, was as blithe and bonnie a lass of eighteen summers as ever gladdened a father's heart. Admirers Mary had in plenty, but the must eligible of them all, in the opinion of the village gossips, was young Ensign Roberts, attached to the American forces at the Fort. Not so, however, thought Mary. The favoured of her heart was a smart young Canadian, who for some time had acted as clerk in her father's store, and had shortly before opened a small establishment of his own on the opposite side of the river, in the thriving village of Niagara. Every Sunday young Morton crossed in his own light skiff to attend church with Mary; and on summer evenings many were the pleasant sails they had upon the shining reaches of the river, watching the sun go down in golden glory in the bosom of blue Ontario, and the silver moon bathe in its pale light the bosky foliage of the shores, beneath which, dark and heavy, crouched the stealthy shadows, while the river rippled calmly by. With the outbreak of the war, however, these pleasant sails and visits ceased. George Morton naturally espoused the cause of his native country, with which, too, all his commercial interests were identified. This brought him at once under the ban of Mary's father, and his visits were interdicted. Ensign Roberts took advantage of the absence of his rival to press his suit, which Squire Lawson favoured as being likely, he thought, to wean Mary from her forbidden attachment to one who was now her country's foe. But he little knew the depth and the strength of a woman's affection. The more her royalist lover was aspersed and maligned, the more warmly glowed her love, the more firm was her resolve to be faithful unto death.