The mother agreed reluctantly, and so did Richard.
“All right,” he settled back. “I’m game. I hate to be told things. I do like to find them out for myself. May I go anywhere?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Wells; “only be careful of the under——”
“S-sh!” Jerry warned.
“Ah-ha!” Richard cried. “Mystery, plot and underground passages! I am in luck. And I do hope there’s heaps of danger.”
“Don’t be too sure you’ve guessed,” laughed Geraldine. “‘Red Jacket’ was one of the ‘stations’ of the Underground Railway which spirited negroes from the South. This was one of the last ‘stations’ before Canada. No! I won’t tell you any more. You are free to go anywhere you please, but I wouldn’t try to walk off Bluff Point after dark. It is only an eight-hundred foot drop to the Lake.”
Richard elected to go first to the porch and sit in the guardianship of the four Ionic columns. The Lake is nearly a mile wide at this point and the view swept southeast over a lengthened vista of water and rolling vineyards.
“Would you like to be introduced?” Geraldine nodded towards the great columns, which shot straight up to the roof-trees. “The farthest one is ‘Tshoti,’ the second is ‘Non,’ the one to your left is ‘Da,’ and the last one is ‘Waga.’ Put together they say Tshoti-non-da-waga, ‘People of the Mountains.’ That is what the Seneca tribe call themselves, and here among the mountains they lived and ruled.”
“My Indian history is rather shaky—but I’m eager to brush up,” said Richard. “The Senecas were one of the Six Nations, weren’t they?”
“Yes; they were the leaders of the Six Nations!”