"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.