"What do you say, Lulu?" her father asked with a smiling glance at her.
"Oh, I'd rather walk, Papa!" she exclaimed. "We have been riding so much for the last week and more; and you know I'm strong and well, and dearly love to climb rocks and hills."
"Very well, you shall do as you like, and have the help of Papa's hand over the hard places," he said, offering it as he spoke.
She put hers into it with a glad look and smile up into his face that almost made Donald Keith envy the Captain the joys of fatherhood.
They set off at once. Lulu found it a rather hard climb, or that it would have been without her father's helping hand; but the top of Mount Independence was at length reached, and the little party stood among the ruins of Fort Putnam. They stood on its ramparts recovering breath after the ascent, their faces turned toward the east, silently gazing upon the beautiful panorama spread out at their feet.
It was the Captain who broke the silence. "You see that range of hills on the farther side of the river, children?"
"Yes, sir," both replied with an inquiring look up into his face.
"In the time of the Revolution every pinnacle was fortified, and on each a watch-fire burned," he said.
"They had a battery on each, Papa?" queried Max.
"Yes; but yonder, at their foot, stands something that will interest you still more,--the Beverly House, from which Arnold the traitor fled to the British ship 'Vulture,' on learning that André had been taken."
"Oh, is it, sir?" exclaimed Max, in a tone of intense interest. "How I would like to visit it,--can we, Papa?"
"I too; oh, very much!" said Lulu. "Please take us there,--won't you, Papa?"
"I fear there will be hardly time, my dears; but I will see about it," was the indulgent reply.
"You have been here before, Raymond?" Mr. Keith said inquiringly.
"Yes; on my first bridal trip," the Captain answered in a low, moved tone, and sighing slightly as the words left his lips.
"With our own mother, Papa?" asked Lulu, softly, looking up into his face with eyes full of love and sympathy.
"Yes, daughter; and she enjoyed the view very much as you are doing now."
"I'm glad; I like to think she saw it once."
An affectionate pressure of the hand he held was his only reply. Then turning to his friend, "It is a grand view, Keith," he said; "and one that always stirs the patriotism in my blood, inherited from ancestors who battled for freedom in those Revolutionary days."