Elsie Yachting with the Raymonds. Finley Martha

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СКАЧАТЬ standing like sentinels beside his grave, – oh I think it is just lovely! I think he showed excellent taste in his choice of a burial-place."

      "Yes, nice place enough to lie in, if one could only be on top of the ground and able to see what it's like," came in hollow tones, seemingly from the grave.

      The Captain glanced at his son with a slightly amused smile.

      Lulu was startled for an instant; then, with a little laugh, as her father took her hand and led her back to the waiting carriage, "Oh, Maxie, that was almost too bad, though he was an enemy to our country!" she exclaimed.

      "I wouldn't have done it if I'd thought it would hurt his feelings," returned Max, in a tone of mock regret; "but I really didn't suppose he'd know or care anything about it."

      "Where now, sir?" asked the driver as the Captain handed Lulu to her seat.

      "To the Schuyler mansion," was the reply.

      "Oh, I'm glad we're going there!" exclaimed Lulu. "I've always liked everything I've heard about General Schuyler; and I'll be ever so glad to see the house he used to live in."

      "It isn't the same house that Burgoyne caroused in the night after the battle of Bemis Heights, is it, Papa?" asked Max.

      "No; that was burned by Burgoyne's orders a few days later," replied the Captain.

      "And when was this one built?" asked Lulu.

      "That is a disputed point," said her father. "Some say it was shortly after the surrender in 1777; others, not until soon after the peace of 1783."

      "Anyhow it was General Schuyler's house, and so we'll be glad to see it," she said. "Papa, is it on the exact spot where the other – the first one – was? The one Burgoyne caroused in, I mean."

      "They say not, quite; that it stands a little to the west of where the first one did."

      "But General Schuyler owned and lived in it, which makes it almost, if not quite, as well worth seeing as the first one would have been," said Max.

      "Yes," assented the Captain. "It was on his return from Bemis Heights that Burgoyne took possession of the mansion for his headquarters; that was on the evening of the 9th of October. His troops, who had been marching through mud, water, and rain for the last twenty-four hours, with nothing to eat, encamped unfed on the wet ground near Schuylerville, while he and his cronies feasted and enjoyed themselves as though the sufferings of the common soldiery were nothing to them."

      "Wasn't that the night before the day the Baroness Riedesel went to the Marshall place?" queried Max.

      "Yes," replied his father. "Her husband, General Riedesel, and others, urgently remonstrated against the unnecessary and imprudent delay, and counselled hasty retreat; but Burgoyne would not listen to their prudent advice. While the storm beat upon his hungry, weary soldiers lying without on the rain-soaked ground, he and his mates held high carnival within, spending the night in merry-making, drinking, and carousing."

      "What a foolish fellow!" said Max. "I wonder that he didn't rather spend it in slipping away from the Americans through the darkness and storm."

      "Or in getting ready to fight them again the next day," added Lulu.

      "I think there was fighting the next day, – wasn't there, Papa?" said Max.

      "Yes; though not a regular battle. Burgoyne was attempting a retreat, which the Americans, constantly increasing in numbers, were preventing, – destroying bridges, obstructing roads leading northward, and guarding the river to the eastward, so that the British troops could not cross it without exposure to a murderous artillery fire. At last, finding his provisions nearly exhausted, himself surrounded by more than five times his own number of troops, and all his positions commanded by his enemy's artillery, the proud British general surrendered."

      "And it was a great victory, – wasn't it, Papa?" asked Lulu.

      "It was, indeed! and God, the God of our fathers, gave it to the American people. The time was one of the great crises of history. Before that battle things looked very dark for the people of this land; and if Burgoyne had been victorious, the probability is that the struggle for liberty would have been given up for no one knows how long. Perhaps we might have been still subject to England."

      "And that would be dreadful!" she exclaimed with warmth, – "wouldn't it, Max?"

      "Yes, indeed!" he assented, his cheek flushing, and his eye kindling; "the idea of this great country being governed by that bit of an island away across the sea! I just feel sometimes as if I'd like to have helped with the fight."

      "In that case," returned his father, with an amused look, "you would hardly be here now; or, if you were, you would be old enough to be my grandfather."

      "Then I'm glad I wasn't, sir," laughed Max; "for I'd rather be your son by a great deal. Papa, wasn't it about that time the stars and stripes were first used?"

      "No, my son; there was at least one used before that," the Captain said with a half smile, – "at Fort Schuyler, which was attacked by St. Leger with his band of British troops, Canadians, Indians, and Tories, early in the previous August. The garrison was without a flag when the enemy appeared before it, but soon supplied themselves by their own ingenuity, tearing shirts into strips to make the white stripes and stars, joining bits of scarlet cloth for the red stripes, and using a blue cloth cloak, belonging to one of the officers, as the groundwork for the stars. Before sunset it was waving in the breeze over one of the bastions of the fort, and no doubt its makers gazed upon it with pride and pleasure."

      "Oh, that was nice!" exclaimed Lulu. "But I don't remember about the fighting at that fort. Did St. Leger take it, Papa?"

      "No; the gallant garrison held out against him till Arnold came to their relief. The story is a very interesting one; but I must reserve it for another time, as we are now nearing Schuyler's mansion."

      The mansion was already in sight, and in a few moments their carriage had drawn up in front of it. They were politely received, and shown a number of interesting relics.

      The first thing that attracted their attention was an artistic arrangement of arms on the wall fronting the great front door.

      "Oh, what are those?" Lulu asked in eager tones, her eyes fixed upon them in an intensely interested way. "Please, sir, may I go and look at them?" addressing the gentleman who had received them and now invited them to walk in.

      "Yes, certainly," he answered with a smile, and leading the way. "This," he said, touching the hilt of a sword, "was carried at the battle of Bennington by an aide of General Stark. This other sword, and this musket and cartridge-box, belonged to John Strover, and were carried by him in the battles of the Revolution."

      "Valuable and interesting souvenirs," remarked Captain Raymond.

      They were shown other relics of those troublous times, – shells, grape, knee and shoe buckles, grubbing-hooks, and other things that had been picked up on the place in the years that had elapsed since the struggle for independence. But what interested Max and Lulu still more than any of these was a beautiful teacup, from which, as the gentleman told them, General Washington, while on a visit to General Schuyler, had drunk tea made from a portion of one of those cargoes of Boston harbour fame.

      "That cup must be very precious, sir," remarked Lulu, gazing admiringly at it. "If it were mine, money couldn't buy it from me."

      "No," he returned СКАЧАТЬ