“I’ll warrant you don’t know when this lake was discovered?” said Nathan; and Faith was delighted to tell him that Samuel De Champlain discovered and gave the lake his name in 1609.
“The Indians used to call it ‘Pe-ton-boque,’” she added.
But when Nathan asked when the fort was built she could not answer, and the boy told her of the brave Frenchmen who built Ticonderoga in 1756, bringing troops and supplies from Canada.
“The old fort has all sorts of provisions, and guns and powder that the English have stored there. I wish the American troops had them. If I were Ethan Allen or Seth Warner I’d make a try, anyway, for this fort and for Crown Point, too,” said Nathan.
The rising wind made it rather difficult for the boy to manage his boat, and he finally landed some distance above the point where Kashaqua had reached shore. Faith was sure that she could go over the fields and find her way safely home, and Nathan was anxious to cross the lake to Shoreham before the wind became any stronger. Faith felt very grateful to him for bringing her from the fort.
“You’ll be as brave as Colonel Allen when you grow up,” she said, as she stood on the shore and watched him paddle off against the wind.
He nodded laughingly. “So will you. Remember your promise,” he called back.
The wind seemed to blow the little girl before it as she hurried across the rough field. She held tight to her velvet cap, and, for the first time, wondered if she had torn or soiled the pretty new dress in her scramble down the cliff. Her mind was so full of the happenings of the afternoon that she did not look ahead to see where she was going, and suddenly her foot slipped and she fell headlong into a mass of thorn bushes, which seemed to seize her dress in a dozen places. By the time Faith had fought her way clear her hands were scratched and bleeding and her dress torn in ragged ugly tears that Faith was sure could never be mended.