The garrison left at Detroit consisted merely of two companies-those of Captains Granville and Molineux, which included among their officers, Middlemore, Villiers and Henry Grantham. After the first excitement produced in the minds of the townspeople, by their change of rulers, had passed away, these young men desirous of society, sought to renew their intimacy with such of the more respectable families as they had been in the habit of associating with prior to hostilities; but although in most instances they were successful, their reception was so different from what it had formerly been, (a change originating not so much in design perhaps as resulting from a certain irrepressible sense of humiliation, which gave an air of gene to all their words and actions,) that they were glad to withdraw themselves altogether within the rude resources of their own walls. It happened however about this period that Colonel D’Egville had received a command to transfer the head of his department from Amherstburg to Detroit, and, with a view to his own residence on the spot, the large and commodious mansion of the late Governor was selected for the abode of his family. With the daughters of that officer, the D’Egvilles had long been intimate, and as the former were to continue under the same roof until their final departure from Detroit, it was with a mutual satisfaction the friends found themselves thus closely reunited—Added to this party were Major Montgomery, (already fast recovering from the effect of his wound,) and his niece, both of whom only awaited the entire restoration of the former, to embark immediately for the nearest American port.
At Colonel D’Egville’s, it will therefore be supposed the officers passed nearly all their leisure hours; Molineux and Villiers flirting with the fair American sisters, until they had nearly been held fast by the chains with which they dallied, and Middlemore uttering his execrable puns with a coolness of premeditation that excited the laughter of the fair part of his auditors, while his companions, on the contrary, expressed their unmitigated abhorrence in a variety of ways.