Here a tall, fine looking black, wearing the livery of Colonel D'Egville, entering to announce that coffee was waiting for them in an adjoining room--the party rose and retired to the ladies. CHAPTER VII. Our readers doubtless bear in mind the spot called Elliott's Point, at the western extremity of Lake Erie, to which we have already introduced him. At a considerable distance beyond that again, (its intermediate shores washed by the silver waves of the Erie,) stretches a second, called also, from the name of its proprietor, Hartley's Point. Between these two necks, are three or four farms; one of which and adjoining Hartley's, was, at the period of which we treat, occupied by an individual of whom, unfortunately for the interests of Canada, too many of the species had been suffered to take root within her soil. For many years previous to the war, adventurers from the United States, chiefly men of desperate fortunes, and even more desperate characters, had, through a mistaken policy, been suffered to occupy the more valuable portion of the country. Upper Canada, in particular, was infested by these people, all of whom, even while taking the customary oath of allegiance to the crown, brought with them, and openly professed, all the partialities of American citizens. By the Canadians and their descendants, French and English, they were evidently looked upon with an eye of distrust, for, independently of the fact of their having been suffered to appropriate, during pleasure, many valuable tracts of land, they had experienced no inconsiderable partiality on the part of the Government. Those who believe in the possibility of attaching a renegade to the soil of his adoption and converting him into a serviceable defender of that soil in a moment of need, commit a great error in politics. The shrewd Canadians knew them better. They complained with bitterness, that at the first appearance of a war, they would hold their oaths of fealty as naught, or that if they did remain, it would only be with a view to embarrass the province with their presence, and secretly to serve the cause of their native country. The event proved that they knew their men. Scarcely had the American declaration of war gone forth, when numbers of these people, availing themselves of their near contiguity, abandoned their homes, and embarking in boats all their disposable property, easily succeeded, under cover of the night, in gaining the opposite coast. Not satisfied however with their double treason, they, in the true spirit of the dog in the manger, seemed resolved others should not enjoy that which was no longer available to themselves, and the dawn that succeeded the night of their departure, more than once broke on scenes of spoliation of their several possessions, which it required one to know these desperate people well, to credit as being the work of their own hands. Melancholy as it was, however, to reflect that the spirit of conciliation had been thus